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Australia, the world’s largest island, has an area of 7.6 million square kilometres. Its population is concentrated around the coast; only 100 000 people inhabit the 5 million square kilometres of the interior. As a result, within a single, politically stable environment, Australia offers some of the most radio-quiet locations on Earth.

The Australian SKA Siting activities decided that the Mileura station, a Western Australian site, was a competitive site for SKA.

Location of the SKA in Australia would benefit from the following :

• Land access would be readily available, given the support from the State, government and local communities for the SKA, allowing array stations to be placed optimally for achieving science objectives.

• Candidate site is near to high-bandwidth optical fibre infrastructure for signal transmission from the outlying stations to the central processor. However, since the land is flat, easily accessed, and sparsely inhabited, and Australian labour costs are low, it would be feasible to lay dedicated optical fibre for the inner regions of the SKA. This would ensure affordable access to fibre over the lifetime of the instrument.

• Inland Australia does not experience extreme weather conditions. Lightning strike rates are low: less than one per square kilometre per year over the candidate SKA sites. Seismic activity is low. Wildland fire risk is very low, because of the sparseness of the vegetation.

• The areas under consideration for the central SKA site has been assessed as being of low mineral prospectivity, and the West Australian Government has protected two candidate areas in its State from mineral exploration.

• The lower population density and greater geographic isolation of Mileura leads to lower levels of interfering man-made radio waves at the high sensitivity levels of the SKA. State Governments have indicated their willingness to establish a radio-quiet reserve over the candidate site, protecting it from incompatible activities.

In addition, Australia has:

• A view of the Southern sky that overlaps that of ALMA and the VLT, and includes excellent access to the centre of the Milky Way;

• A well-developed community of radio astronomers with a strong history of scientific discovery and technological innovation;

• A technologically sophisticated society with extensive engineering capabilities and wide experience in international partnerships.

More about this location :
Download the White Paper (PDF)
Website: Australian SKA consortia website
Webpage: Swinburne SKA Simulation and Radio Interferometry Group
News: 15.02.05 - Australia: Traditional owners give green light to telescope project
News 11.02.05 - SKA Site Spectrum Monitorng in Australia

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