First fringes refers to the successful correlation of data from separate antennas stations – in this case two stations – signifying that SKA-Low has begun to work as an interferometer.
Both of the SKA Observatory’s telescopes – SKA-Low in Western Australia and its counterpart SKA-Mid in South Africa’s Northern Cape – are radio interferometers. They work by combining data from antennas spread over large distances, creating virtual telescopes equivalent in size to the separation between the furthest antennas for each telescope.
By using interferometry, a technique which uses the interference of electromagnetic waves to extract information, the two SKAO’s telescopes will transform our understanding of the Universe. “This is the day that the SKA Observatory as a scientific facility was born,” SKAO Director-General Professor Philip Diamond said. Read here the SKAO press release.
Image: © SKAO; These graphics shows the phase structure of the correlated signal between two SKA-Low stations of 256 antennas each. The phase structure varies with time and frequency and is caused by the projected station separation toward the radio galaxy Centaurus A.