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SKAO and Shanghai strengthen ties
from Contact 14
BY MATTHEW TAYLOR (SKAO)
Shanghai’s Vice Mayor Duo Liu led a delegation to SKAO HQ in October as part of a visit that underscored the Observatory’s strong relationship with the city.
During the visit the SKAO signed a memorandum of understanding formalising ties with the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO), which developed the first SKA Regional Centre (SRC) prototype and hosts annual Chinese SKA Summer Schools.
“This marks an important milestone in collaborations between the SKAO and SHAO,” said Prof. Zhiqiang Shen, Director of SHAO. “The China SKA Regional Centre team has made progress establishing the first prototype SRC and co-hosting the 2019 SKA Engineering Meeting, contributing greatly to scientific operations of precursor telescopes and prototyping the SRC Network.”
During a tour of the HQ, the 16-strong delegation got a closeup look at an SKA-Mid dish panel: an example of one of the 66 slightly concave triangular pieces, each weighing 45 kg with sides measuring 3 m, that will tessellate together to form a complete 15-metre-wide SKA-Mid dish.
The panels are built by the 54th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC54) in Shijiazhuang, Hebei.
The delegates included Prof. Tao An, head of the China SRC team, who gave an update on current activities.
“Currently the China SRC team is focusing on working with our international partners to prepare the SRC Network, so that it is ready to support the testing and verification of data from the partial SKA telescope arrays as they are rolled out,” he said. “We’re also conducting outreach and education like SKA summer schools and data processing workshops to train the next generation of SKA scientists.”
