And you thought EPIC 3D would be a lot of data...

[soundslikejustin]

Read about this today - basically a radio telescope to cover a large proportion of our country (and some of New Zealand)

http://www.watoday.com.au/technology/sci-tech/wa-in-spotlight-as-space-race-heats-up-20120213-1t1hv.html

The interesting part for me was the rate at which this 'SKA' will need to transmit and store data...

'To put it into perspective, the telescope will capture the equivalent of more than a million CD ROMs of data every minute'

and

'the amount of data generated by the whole world in one year will need to be stored in a single day'

[Chase Yeremian]

just wow

Read about this today - basically a radio telescope to cover a large proportion of our country (and some of New Zealand)

http://www.watoday.c...0213-1t1hv.html

The interesting part for me was the rate at which this 'SKA' will need to transmit and store data...

'To put it into perspective, the telescope will capture the equivalent of more than a million CD ROMs of data every minute'

and

'the amount of data generated by the whole world in one year will need to be stored in a single day'

[ShubiSnax]

Comes out to roughly 12TB/second??

[davidm]

Never mind the data, what about the bandwidth? This project requires antenna arrays from VHF up to microwave. It also requires clear spectrum and that's why relatively unpopulated parts of Western Australia would be a great place to host this project.

While the glossy pictures have microwave dishes pointing to the sky, there is little indication if the VHF and UHF arrays will or will not also be sited in eastern Australia and New Zealand. One of the two New Zealand sites (Ardmore) is 25km from the centre of our largest city, Auckland.

I picked up the following from some South African background papers. The VHF & UHF spectrum will require an extraordinary low level of RF background noise by todays standards. If the 606 - 614 MHz radio astronomy band is used, 8MHz either side would be needed as guard bands. A 10 watt transmission at 300km distance would be a problem.

So there goes another 20 to 24 MHz of TV / radio mic bandwidth. I just wonder if the radio astronomy project people have talked to the radio spectrum managment people.