A conference of astronomers and scientists that will support the world's largest radio telescope -- the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) -- is ongoing at Goa, India.

The SKA project's 2016 science conference, "Science for the SKA Generation," has drawn some 200 scientists to the week-long conference that focuses on bringing early career and senior researchers together to develop new collaborations and preview the science SKA will do in 2023 and beyond.

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SKA is a large multi radio telescope project to be built in Australia and South Africa. When completed in 2023, SKA will have a total collecting area of one square kilometer.

It will operate over a wide range of frequencies and its size will make it 50 times more sensitive than any other radio instrument on Earth. More important, SKS will be able to survey the sky more than 10,000 times faster than ever before.

Engineering teams from around the world are currently finalizing the design of the telescope, while the international astronomy community prepares to use this next-generation facility.

The conference has brought together PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from the radio astronomy community to foster new collaborations for the SKA era.

"This week's meeting in Goa is an excellent opportunity to highlight results obtained with SKA pathfinder and precursor telescopes from around the world, as well as further advance the planning of our Key Science Projects," said Robert Braun, SKA Science Director.

"The next few years will see a wave of new results emerging from the suite of powerful radio telescopes such as FAST in China, GMRT in India, LOFAR in the Netherlands, MeerKAT and HERA in South Africa and MWA and ASKAP in Australia. Scientists who are using these facilities will become the first generation of users to make exciting discoveries with the SKA."

Key science projects are large observing campaigns focused on answering specific high priority objectives that will utilize a large fraction of the first five years of SKA operations.

Many areas of astrophysics will be covered throughout the week. These include the epoch of re-ionization and the study of the cosmic dawn (the first billion years of the universe); the distribution of hydrogen in the universe; the study of transient phenomena such as fast radio bursts; cosmic magnetism; monitoring the Sun's activity; mapping pulsars in our galaxy and the search for life in the universe.

The meeting is organized by the international SKA Organization with the local support of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune, India, which represents India in the SKA project.

TagsSquare Kilometer Array, SKA, Science for the SKA Generation, astronomers, Robert Braun, SKA Organization