Scientists to meet on radio telescope project

Scientists seeking to site a A$2 billion ($2.14 billion) "digital" radio telescope in Australia or New Zealand will meet in Wellington today.

The academics and other researchers making up New Zealand's square kilometre array (SKA) project committee will meet for the first time.

Their plan for the proposed radio telescope would use modern digital technology, including supercomputers and broadband communication links, to compare and match huge amounts of data while observations are being made.

SKA project lobbyists will meet Government agencies and ministers to give them background information on the project.

They will be accompanied by representatives of the Auckland University of Technology, whose centre for radiophysics and space research was accepted as the New Zealand partner in the Australasian SKA Consortium.

Radio astronomy and very large baseline interferometry techniques are used for cutting-edge research in astrophysics, Earth and atmospheric sciences, and geodesy - the science of measuring the size and shape of the Earth and precisely locating points on its surface.

"The potential to bring New Zealand into these big global developments in radioscience and supercomputing is clearly there for grasping," AUT professor Sergei Gulyaev said.

He said it was likely a Southern Hemisphere location - Australia and New Zealand - would be preferred for the SKA project because that would offer the best views of the centre of the galaxy.

Only nine of the 154 radio telescopes are in the Southern Hemisphere

- NZPA