One of the most frequently asked questions during guided tours at the Sardinia Radio Telescope is about when it will start its operations: “When will SRT begin making observations and discoveries?”
The Sardinian radio telescope has so far been engaged in a delicate and important phase of scientific validation, a sort of scientific “testing” to ensure that the instruments are well-tuned and calibrated and fully functional. Now this phase of development and testing is complete, and SRT can open up to the scientific community.
It does so with a competitive call, known in scientific jargon as a call for proposal, on defined Early Science Program projects: a few large, high-profile scientific projects on which to focus the efforts of the team operating the telescope, also to optimize the quality of the data collected and the results to be achieved.
“We have finally reached the end of the first phase of the telescope’s development, and we are starting its operations, complementing years of hard work, and at the same time beginning the phase of scientific production, the most exciting and full of expectations,” says SRT Manager Ettore Carretti.
The projects will be selected in January by a dedicated committee, and observations will begin on February 1, 2016. Given the high expectations in the astronomical community, it is expected that a large number of high-profile scientific projects will be submitted to choose from. The selection will hopefully lead to the immediate realization of great astronomical science, the declared goal of this giant of radio astronomy.
“This is an important milestone for Italian radio astronomy,” says Nichi D’Amico, Full Professor at the University of Cagliari and, for a few weeks, the new President of INAF, “a milestone that has seen the fruitful collaboration of researchers and technicians located in various INAF locations and universities, particularly Bologna and Florence, as well as Cagliari, and which represents a great development opportunity for Sardinia.”