The technological and scientific development of ASKAP

TL;DR

ASKAP's innovative phased array feeds enable rapid, high-resolution radio sky surveys, leading to significant scientific discoveries such as neutral hydrogen mapping, radio source catalogs, and fast radio burst localization.

Contribution

This paper reviews the development, capabilities, and scientific achievements of ASKAP, highlighting its novel phased array feeds and survey speed.

Findings

Increased science results from ASKAP pilot surveys.

Successful mapping of neutral hydrogen in nearby galaxies.

Discovery of odd radio circles and localization of fast radio bursts.

Abstract

Science results from pilot surveys with the full 36-antenna Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) have increased strongly over the last few years. This trend is likely to continue with full surveys scheduled to commence later this year. Thanks to novel Phased Array Feeds each ASKAP pointing covers around 30 square degr, making it a fast survey machine delivering high-resolution radio images of the sky. Among recent science highlights are the studies of neutral hydrogen in the Magellanic Clouds as well as nearby galaxy groups and clusters, catalogs of millions of radio continuum sources, the discovery of odd radio circles, and the localization of fast radio bursts, to name just a few. To demonstrate the ASKAP survey speed we also conducted the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS) covering the whole sky south of declination +41 degr at 15 arcsec resolution.