Newsletter
Newsletter 30, March 2011
This is one of a series of newsletters to keep interested parties informed about the progress of SKA-related activities in
Australia and New Zealand. Previous newsletters are available from  www.ska.gov.au  www.ska.govt.nz
Contents
Click on a title below to quickly access the article
General News
1
CETC Visits CSIRO and the MRO
5
Discover SKA – The World’s Biggest Telescope
1
CSIRO’s ASKAP Ramps Up in 2011
2
First Silicon-on-Sapphire Prototype SKA Receiver
Chip
5
First Light for anzSKA e-VLBI
2
ASKAIC ‘Goes Global’
5
anzSKA Delegation Visits USA and Canada
3
Australian LBA Annual Meeting in Auckland
6
Science News
3
Regional News from Geraldton
6
ICRAR–CSIRO Collaborate on EMC
3
WA Supercomputer in Top 100 List
6
Result from EDGES in Nature
3
Wajarri Representatives Visit the MRO
6
SKAMP Correlator System Progresses
4
Education and Outreach
6
MWA Receivers Ready for the MRO
4
Pia Wajarri Students Visit the MRO
6
Industry News
5
Education Across the Nation
6
MRO Infrastructure Tender Awarded
5
General News
Discover SKA – The World’s Biggest
Telescope
Science and education organisations across Australia and
New Zealand are uniting in support of the SKA (Square
Kilometre Array), the world’s biggest telescope.
Launching on 1 April, ‘Discover SKA’ will encompass
many hundreds of community events across Australia
and New Zealand. The initiative aims to communicate the
global benefits of the SKA to the general public, while
generating enthusiasm about the potential for Australia
and New Zealand to host the world’s largest scientific
experiment.
Some Discover SKA highlights are
``
A large number of public talks about the SKA at venues
around Australia, including CSIRO Discovery Centre
(Canberra), ICRAR (Perth), WA Museum (Various locations),
Artist’s impression of dishes that will make up the SKA radio telescope.
Image credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions/SKA Program
Development Office.
Scienceworks (Melbourne), the Royal Institution of Australia
(Adelaide) the Sydney Observatory, and many others;
``
CSIRO Teacher Workshops on astronomy and the SKA
in Sydney and Parkes, presented in conjunction with
VSSEC (Victorian Space Science Education Centre) and
Scienceworks in Melbourne;
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``
An outreach tour of the Pilbara area by ICRAR (International
Centre for Radio Astronomy Research);
``
Tour to Mid West outback schools by CSIRO and Western
Australia Department of Education and Training, to excite
school students about science and technology;
``
Regular showings of the SKA animation films to visitors
to the Swinburne University Virtual Reality Theatre;
``
A week-long program at Questacon (Canberra) of
SKA shows, talks, demonstrations plus a series of
videoconferences for schools across the country;
``
SKA Presentations by WA’s Chief Scientist, Professor
Lyn Beazley, to shire councils and schools in regional WA;
``
The Astronomy WA Challenge Cup hosted at Scitech
in Perth;
``
A number of school-based educational events around
Australia.
The activities are being coordinated in Australia by Questacon
on behalf of the Department of Innovation, Industry Science
and Research (DIISR), with assistance from CSIRO, ICRAR
(International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research), Scitech
and the WA Department of Commerce. In New Zealand,
the National Science–Technology Roadshow Trust will be
coordinating community events, with support from the
Ministry of Economic Development.
The flagship of the ASKAP digital systems boards is the
Redback-2 Digital Signal Processor (DSP). This circuit board
has a high level of complexity that pushes the limits of
manufacturability, such as BGA packaged devices with pin
counts in excess of 1100 pins. Puzzle’s ability to deliver these
systems to very high reliability is a sound demonstration of
manufacturing excellence within Australia.
First Light for anzSKA e-VLBI
The first virtual Trans-Tasman ‘e-Telescope’ came to
life in February, when radio telescopes in Australia and
New Zealand were linked together in real time, via the
Auckland University of Technology (AUT) Warkworth Radio
Astronomical Observatory and CSIRO’s Mopra Telescope
near Narrabri.
The first ever virtual e-Telescope for Australia – New Zealand
was achieved when the two radio telescopes were operated
remotely via KAREN (New Zealand’s Kiwi Advanced Research
and Education Network) and AARNet (Australia’s Academic
and Research Network), from Warkworth.
A suite of promotional and audiovisual materials is available
for event holders, and your event and organisation will
have the opportunity to be highlighted in national media
coverage.
To be a part of this great initiative, or to find out more
information about hosting activities during April–June 2011,
please contact Annie Harris, Discover SKA coordinator on
aharris@questacon.edu.au.
CSIRO’s ASKAP Ramps Up in 2011
Following the successful construction of the first six of
CSIRO’s ASKAP antennas in 2010 (see anzSKA Newsletter 29),
the overall technical build of ASKAP continues to progress
in 2011.
The major digital back-end systems for ASKAP are progressing
to schedule, ready for full integration testing over the coming
months. For these systems Puzzle Precision, a supplier of
high-end digital systems, are currently delivering major
components of the ASKAP digital systems (such as boards,
DRAMs, front panels and heatsink systems). These boards are
delivered fully tested and ready for ASKAP systems integration
at the CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science (CASS) site in
Marsfield, and eventually to the Murchison Radio-astronomy
Observatory (MRO) in Western Australia.
Australian and New Zealand VLBI team members working together
on the real-time e-VLBI experiment at Warkworth. From left to right:
Cormac Reynolds (Curtin University, Australia), Tim Natusch (AUT, NZ),
Steven Tingay (ICRAR, Australia), Jordan Alexander (AUT, NZ), Shaun Amy
(CSIRO, Australia), Mahmoud Mahmoud (AUT, NZ), Tasso Tzioumis
(CSIRO, Australia). Image Credit: Sergei Gulyaev, AUT.
A range of astronomical objects were observed by the
pair of dishes which challenged the sensitivity of the
system, from quasar PKS 1921-293, one of the strongest
compact radio sources in the southern sky, to a relatively
weak radio source.
The week-long session of first ever real-time Trans-Tasman
e-VLBI (electronic Very Long Baseline Interferometry)
experiments successfully demonstrated e-VLBI technologies,
a key component of the Australia – New Zealand commitment
to the SKA project.
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anzSKA Delegation Visits USA and
Canada
A delegation of representatives from Australia’s science and
technology community recently visited the USA for a series
of meetings on bilateral science collaboration, including
the inaugural USA–Australia Joint Commission Steering
Committee Meeting (JCM) on Science and Technology.
As part of the visit, representatives of the Australia –
New Zealand SKA project from DIISR and CSIRO also met
with SKA project stakeholders in the US and Canada.
Discussions covered progress with the overall SKA program,
including forthcoming SKA program meetings and the
2011 International SKA Forum being hosted by the US and
Canadian SKA communities in Banff, Canada.
During the trip, a reception was held at the Australian
Embassy in Washington where His Excellency Kim Beazley
introduced a presentation by Dr Brian Boyle, CSIRO SKA
Director for Australia – New Zealand, on the great ambition
of the SKA project and the excitement it is generating in
these countries. Officials from several governments were
in attendance.
This program will not certify or otherwise endorse particular
equipment or installations but will assist industry to predict
possible impacts of their operations on the radio astronomy
activities at the MRO.
This will also increase understanding of typical emission
signatures from various types of industry activity, helping to
frame long-term strategies for collaboration between science
and commerce.
Dr Franz Schlagenhaufer (left) and Brian Crosse test equipment in
ICRAR’s anechoic chamber at Curtin University. Image credit: ICRAR.
Result from EDGES in Nature
In December 2010, the Experiment to Detect the Global EoR
Signature (EDGES) project released results of a three-month
experiment performed using the EDGES spectrometer
system, deployed at the MRO since 2009.
His Excellency Kim Beazley AC, Australian Ambassador to the United
States of America introduces Dr Brian Boyle’s presentation at the
Australian Embassy in Washington DC. Image credit: DIISR.
Science News
ICRAR–CSIRO Collaborate on EMC
ICRAR and CSIRO are collaborating to promote industry
understanding of the radio frequency interference mitigation
requirements for radio astronomy at the MRO.
Through an industry engagement program, ICRAR will
use its electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) measurement
and diagnostic capacity to perform field and laboratory
measurements. Furthermore, as part of the characterisation
of the system under test ICRAR will draw extensively on
CSIRO’s expertise in radio wave propagation.
The experiment was designed to detect a never-before-seen
signal from the early Universe, a development that has the
potential to revolutionise the understanding of how the first
galaxies formed and evolved. Instead of looking for the early
galaxies themselves, the experiment looks for hydrogen gas
that existed between the galaxies.
“Our goal is to detect a signal from the time of the EoR (Epoch
of Reionization). We want to pin down when the first galaxies
formed and then understand what types of stars existed in
them and how they affected their environments,” says Judd
Bowman, member of the EDGES team and Assistant Professor
at Arizona State University (ASU).
The experiment has shown that the gas between galaxies
could not have been ionized extremely rapidly. This marks
the first time that radio observations have directly probed
the properties of primordial gas during the EoR and paves the
way for future studies.
The results of this experiment are published in the December
edition of Nature. For more information: http://www.
eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-12/asu-aao120610.php
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this is a significant driver for the completion of SKAMP
given its large field of view. In 2010, SKAMP was officially
designated an SKA Pathfinder instrument.
MWA Receivers Ready for the
MRO
Perth-based Poseidon Scientific Instruments (PSI) recently
succeeded in packaging sensitive electronics of Murchison
Wide-field Array (MWA) receivers into environmentally
controlled enclosures, which is a critical milestone for the
MWA project.
The EDGES system at the MRO; the dipole antenna is in the foreground
with its black coaxial cable leading back to the system’s digital receiver
in the white support trailer. The trailer, supplied by CSIRO, provided
solar power and electromagnetic interference protection for the digital
electronics. Image credit: Judd Bowman.
SKAMP Correlator System
Progresses
SKAMP (SKA Molonglo Prototype) is transforming the
University of Sydney’s MOST (Molonglo Observatory Synthesis
Telescope) with a whole new signal processing back-end and
testing new technologies for the SKA.
The SKAMP correlator board was officially ‘handed over’
by the system builders at CSIRO in September 2010 (see
anzSKA Newsletter 29). More recently, the University of Sydney
has taken delivery of the rest of the digital system hardware
from CSIRO. University of Sydney engineers have installed the
new system on site in preparation for full system integration
testing.
Professor Steven Tingay, ICRAR Deputy Director, says “These
are the first of 64 identical enclosures that will service more
than 500 MWA antennas spread over a nine square kilometre
area of the remote Murchison region in Western Australia.”
The enclosures also prevent electronics inside the unit from
interfering with other equipment on the site, preserving
a radio-quiet environment at the MRO.
ICRAR, based in Perth, is leading an Australian consortium
working closely with other Australian, US and Indian partners
to build the MWA. The MWA is one of three official SKA
Precursor telescopes, defined as being located on one of the
two SKA candidate sites and carrying out SKA-related activity.
The MWA partnership with PSI is a great success for ICRAR and
assists in positioning the organisation to participate in future
radio astronomy opportunities such as the SKA.
Recent verification testing exercised all the chips on the
correlator board; the major test was to pass data between
FPGA (field programmable gate array) chips at the design
speed. The successful testing was the first time that code
of this scale has been run at such a high rate on the boards.
The development team at Molonglo is currently implementing
an output interface so that the correlator output can be sent
over Ethernet to the data pipeline computers.
New team members, Jay Banyer and Greg Madsen, joined
the University of Sydney in January 2011 to develop software
required to ensure SKAMP is a fully-functional telescope.
This includes writing a data pipeline and source acquisition
system as well as focussing on science-related aspects such
as calibration, visualization, imaging, and integrating the
standard Myriad astronomical imaging package.
It is planned to also develop a pipeline capable of
automatically detecting transient astronomical sources;
The MWA receiver, with (L–R) Professor Steven Tingay (ICRAR, Curtin
University), Jesse H Searls (PSI), Derek Carroll (PSI), and Mark Waterson
(ICRAR, Curtin University). Image credit: ICRAR.
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Industry News
MRO Infrastructure Tender
Awarded
Following a tender evaluation process, McConnell Dowell
Constructors (Aust) Pty. Ltd. was selected by CSIRO as
the successful tender for the construction of support
infrastructure at the MRO in Western Australia.
The project commences immediately, with a 45-week schedule,
and is a significant milestone in ongoing development of
the MRO site. The scope of work involves the construction of
several kilometres of access roads and tracks, power and data
infrastructure, a central control building and 30 radio antenna
concrete foundations, as well as ancillary works.
The infrastructure work will support telescopes at the MRO,
including CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP), the
MWA and EDGES.
CETC Visits CSIRO and the MRO
In December 2010, senior staff from China Electronics
Technology Group Corporation (CETC) visited the CSIRO
Astronomy and Space Science headquarters in Sydney.
The purpose of the visit was to continue to foster the excellent
relationship between CETC54 and CSIRO. Both parties were
keen to recognize the success of the ASKAP antenna contract
to date with CETC54’s capacity to fully assemble and precision
align all antennas in their factory in Shijiazhuang before
shipping to Australia; resulting in a fast build-time and with
no adjustment of the reflector surfaces being required once
on-site at the MRO.
The CETC team also had the opportunity to informally meet
members of the Australia – New Zealand SKA Coordination
Committee (ANZSCC) over coffee before departing for the
MRO, for a close-up inspection of the six newly constructed
ASKAP antennas.
Carole Jackson, CSIRO Business Development Manager,
cited the success of the visit, noting, “This was an excellent
opportunity to show the antennas to the CEO of CETC and to
continue to explore China’s expertise in producing low-cost
antennas at a cost-specification for the SKA.”
First Silicon-on-Sapphire Prototype
SKA Receiver Chip
A significant milestone has been achieved in the development
of a radio receiver on a chip, with the first chip design now
being fabricated.
As part of a collaboration between CSIRO and Silanna
(previously Sapphicon Semiconductor) the chip is being
manufactured at Silanna’s foundry in Sydney, Australia, and
integrates much of the electronics required to process one
channel’s worth of data in a Phased Array Feed (PAF) or
Aperture Array (AA) receiver into a single integrated circuit.
The receiver design features a pair of downconverters, with a
tuning range of 200–2000 MHz and a bandwidth of more than
300 MHz, as well as anti-aliasing filters, attenuators, and an
ADC driver. Local oscillator signals for the two downconverters
are generated on-chip from a 23 frequency reference, with
precise phase matching.
“The chip, which measures just 2.8 3 2.8 mm, also includes
precision bias circuitry and digital control,” says Suzy Jackson,
ASKAP electronics engineer at CSIRO. “This minimises the
number of external components needed to build a receiver,
which also leads to a reduction in size, weight, power and cost.”
Once fabricated, the chips will be tested and integrated into
a demonstrator array that will perform the entire analogue
processing in the phased array feed package.
ASKAIC ‘Goes Global’
The first meeting for 2011 of ASKAIC (Australasian SKA
Industry Consortium) was hosted by IBM Australia and held
at the IBM Innovation Centre in Sydney. One of the key topics
discussed at the meeting was global industry’s capacity to
work effectively with the research community in addressing
SKA’s engineering challenges.
Mr Tu Tianjie, President of CETC54, with Chief of CSIRO Astronomy and
Space Science Dr Phil Diamond. Image credit: Tony Crawshaw, CSIRO.
ASKAIC, although industry-led, increasingly typifies strong
Australia – New Zealand collaboration between the three
sectors of industry, government and the research community.
Attention is now focused on some of the emerging issues and
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opportunities for industry in the development of a suitable
governance structure for the SKA.
‘plug and play’ POD allows rapid deployment when compared
to similar-sized systems.
It is clear that 2011–12 will be a critical period for private
sector engagement with the SKA; one which should clarify the
‘pathway’ for global industry interest in the initiative. ASKAIC’s
focus also includes evaluating the non-science benefits of SKA,
building on the outcomes of the Rome Forum in March 2010.
“Enabling our users to access advanced resources in the
100 Teraflops range through the POD system will allow them
to grow into the petascale era,” said iVEC Executive Director
Professor Andrew Rohl.
Australian LBA Annual Meeting in
Auckland
The Australian LBA (Long Baseline Array) Annual Meeting
for 2011 was held at Auckland University of Technology in
New Zealand, from 7–9 February.
During the meeting, CSIRO and AUT signed a letter of intent
making AUT’s Warkworth 12-m radio telescope part of the
Australian LBA. This step will dramatically increase the LBA
baseline by a factor of three, adding an important east-west
dimension.
Plans for joint Australia – New Zealand VLBI and e-VLBI
operations were also discussed at the meeting, along with
a range of technical issues, including software correlation,
standards, data acquisition and calibration. CEOs Chris
Hancock (AARNet) and Donald Clark (KAREN) also attended
the meeting, participating in an extensive discussion of
data transfer and e-VLBI issues which are one of the most
important elements of the future SKA.
When finalised in 2013, the Pawsey Centre will process
radioastronomy data from the MRO, through a high speed
optic fibre connection, at up to 15 times faster than the POD.
Wajarri Representatives Visit the
MRO
In late 2010 the MRO Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA)
Liaison Committee Meeting was held at Boolardy Station
in Western Australia. The Meeting coincided with a visit
to the MRO by CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science chief
Dr Phil Diamond and CSIRO’s ASKAP Project Director
Ant Schinckel, which provided the opportunity to meet
informally with the Wajarri representatives.
At the conclusion of the Meeting, ILUA members toured the
MRO and viewed, for the first time, the six newly installed
ASKAP antennas that were constructed during 2010. The
Wajarri people have provided CSIRO a list of Wajarri names
that will be used for key infrastructure at the MRO in the
future.
Regional News from Geraldton
Education and Outreach
WA Supercomputer in Top 100 List
Pia Wajarri Students Visit the MRO
Western Australia entered the ranks of the Top 100
supercomputers on the planet, following iVEC’s installation
of a Performance Optimised Data (POD) Centre at its Murdoch
University facility in Perth.
CSIRO Education Officer Rob Hollow and ASKAP Aboriginal
Liaison Officer Robin Boddington led a group of school
students from the Pia Wajarri Remote Community to the MRO
during December 2010.
The POD is Stage 1A of the $80 million Pawsey High
Performance Computing Centre project, commissioned under
the Commonwealth Government’s $1.1 billion Super Science
Initiative to establish a petascale supercomputing facility that
will enhance the Australia – New Zealand bid for the SKA.
Pia Wajarri is a remote community located near Boolardy, and
the students were very curious and excited to see the ASKAP
antennas for themselves. The Pia Wajarri delegation consisted
of twelve students and six teachers who were amazed at the
size of the antennas located ‘on country’.
The prestigious Top 500 project is a global gauge of the
world’s most powerful supercomputers, tracking and detecting
trends in high-performance computing. The latest list sees
the Hewlett-Packard (HP)-developed POD enter the list at
87th rank following its delivery to iVEC at Murdoch University.
Rob Hollow spoke about the ASKAP antennas and answered
the students’ questions. Rob has been working closely with
the Pia Wajarri Remote Community School since 2006
when he delivered the ‘Wildflowers in the Sky’ astronomy
education project.
Only one other Australian supercomputer currently ranks
with the POD in this list, with the National Computational
Infrastructure facility in Canberra coming in at number 51. Using
modified shipping container architecture, the energy-efficient
Education Across the Nation
Throughout the year the Australian Computer Society (ACS)
holds several series of ‘Education Across the Nation’ (EdXN)
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lectures. With the aim of enhancing understanding of emerging
technologies, trends and research in the ICT industry, each
lecture series features a different speaker presenting to
audiences of several hundred IT professionals in every
state/territory capital city.
This year, the first EdXN speaker is ICRAR’s Kevin Vinsen,
who will deliver a talk as part of the ‘Discover SKA‘ initiative
entitled ‘Space – there is a lot of data out there’.
In his lecture Kevin will describe the SKA, as well as ICT
challenges involved in the project and the leading edge work
being done in Australia by CSIRO, iVEC and ICRAR, in addition
to other organisations involved in the anzSKA bid.
Kevin Vinsen is a Research Associate Professor with ICRAR at
the University of Western Australia. His research investigates
the Extremely Large Databases, Machine Learning and
High Performance Computing.
CSIRO advises that the information contained in this publication comprises general statements based on scientific research. The reader is
advised and needs to be aware that such information may be incomplete or unable to be used in any specific situation. No reliance or actions
must therefore be made on that information without seeking prior professional scientific and technical advice. To the extent permitted by law,
CSIRO (including its employees and consultants) excludes all liability to any person for any consequences, including but not limited to all losses,
damages, costs, expenses and any other compensation, arising directly or indirectly from using this publication (in part or in whole)
and any information or material contained in it.
Material may be reproduced on the condition that CSIRO’s copyright is acknowledged.
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For more information contact:
Flornes Conway-Derley (Email: flornes.conway-derley@csiro.au, Phone: +61 2 9372 4339)
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