The SKAO Appoints Construction Directors for South Africa and Australia
Press Release from SKAO
Tracy Cheetham and Antony Schinckel have between them nearly 50 years’ experience delivering telescopes and associated infrastructure.
Two respected science infrastructure experts have been appointed to lead construction activities at the telescope sites of the SKAO, respectively, located in the Karoo in South Africa and Western Australia.
Tracy Cheetham, who is currently the head of construction planning for the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), will be the site construction director of the SKAO’s mid-frequency telescope in South Africa.
Antony Schinckel, who is currently the SKA’s head of construction planning for Australia and leads the SKA programme at Australia’s national science agency CSIRO, will be the site construction director of the SKAO’s low-frequency telescope in Australia.
In 2013, the Hubble Space Telescope found the birth certificate of oldest known star in the universe, cataloged as HD 140283, aptly named “methuselah”. The star, located in the constellation Libra, which is at the very first stages of expanding into a red giant, could be as old as 14.5 billion years (plus or minus 0.8 billion years), which at first glance would make it older than the universe’s calculated age of about 13.8 billion years, creating what we commonly call a dilemma.
The strange star, said NASA’s Hubble team, which has an anemic 1/250th as much of the heavy element content of our sun and other stars in our solar neighborhood.)has been known about for more than a century because of its fast motion across the sky. The high rate of motion is evidence that the star is simply a visitor to our stellar neighborhood. Its orbit carries it down through the plane of our galaxy from the ancient halo of stars that encircle the Milky Way, and will eventually slingshot back