The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Organisation is pleased to invite representatives of the international media to a unique event: the launch of Shared Sky, the SKA’s international art/astronomy exhibition, on Tuesday 30 September. The launch event will be webcasted for members of the media unable to attend in person.

Shared Sky stems from a vision by the SKA Project to bring together, for the first time ever, Australian and South African indigenous and local artists in a collaborative exhibition celebrating humanity’s ancient wisdom of the night sky. This vision embodies the spirit of the international science and engineering collaboration that is the SKA project itself, the world’s largest radio telescope, which brings together more than 20 nations around two sites in remote Western Australia and South Africa to study the same sky and revolutionise our understanding of the Universe.

Shared Sky presents an unprecedented opportunity for these ancient peoples to meet and reflect upon the countless generations of proud custodianship of their respective homelands and unique art and draw strength and inspiration from each other. 

Through the exhibition, their visions of the Universe and creation myths will be brought together to celebrate our common heritage, now observed by astronomers: one sky, shared by all.

Launch Date: Tuesday 30 September 2014

Proceedings: 7:30pm WST (11:30 UT)

Location: John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University, Western Australia (and webcast globally)

Shared Sky is presented by the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Organisation, Manchester, UK; SKA South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa; SKA Australia, Canberra, Australia in collaboration with Curtin University’s Institute of Radio Astronomy and the John Curtin Gallery.

Shared Sky was developed in collaboration with, amongst others, Yamaji Art Centre, Geraldton, Western Australia and the First People Centre at the Bethesda Arts Centre, Nieu Bethesda, Eastern Cape, South Africa.

Media are invited to follow the official opening of the exhibition by the Director General of the SKA Organisation, Professor Philip Diamond via a one way webcast.

Media can also register for a press conference immediately following the launch event, where the artists and representatives from the SKA Organisation, SKA Africa, SKA Australia, and the John Curtin Gallery will be available for interviews.

RSVP is essential by writing to ska-outreach@skatelescope.org

On Twitter: #SharedSky

Contact:

William Garnier
W.Garnier@skatelescope.org

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About the SKA

The SKA project is an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope, with a square kilometre (one million square metres) of collecting area. The scale of the SKA represents a huge leap forward in both engineering and research & development towards building and delivering a radio telescope, and will deliver a correspondingly transformational increase in science capability when operational.

Deploying thousands of radio telescopes, in three unique configurations, which will enable astronomers to monitor the sky in unprecedented detail and survey the entire sky thousands of times faster than any system currently in existence. The SKA telescope will be co-located in Africa and in Australia. It will have an unprecedented scope in observations, exceeding the image resolution quality of the Hubble Space Telescope by a factor of 50 times, whilst also having the ability to image huge areas of sky in parallel. With a range of other large telescopes in the optical and infrared being built and launched into space over the coming decades, the SKA will perfectly augment, compliment and lead the way in scientific discovery.

The SKA Organisation, with its headquarters at Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Manchester, UK, was established in December 2011 as a not-for-profit company in order to formalise relationships between the international partners and to centralise the leadership of the project. Eleven countries are currently members of the SKA Organisation – Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.