2008 : 75 YEARS OF RADIO ASTRONOMY

• In 1933 Karl Jansky declared to the world that he had discovered radio emissions coming from the centre of our galaxy, and the science of Radio Astronomy was born.

  Today we are entering a new era in radio astronomy with the construction of several large radio telescopes around the world that will have multiple beams and imaging capability over a wide frequency range, allowing us to probe the transient universe with more thorougness than ever before, and address some basic problems of cosmology.

  Several of these new telescopes are being built or hosted in Australia and will employ the latest digital signal acquisition and processing techniques. They will hopefully lead toward the development of the ambitious Square Kilometre Array.

  For historical detail on the first 50 years of radio astronomy see the Golden Jubilee of Radio Astronomy.