UK’s Royal Society to feature the SKA project during summer exhibition

Above: The SKAO stand will feature interactive exhibits like those which proved popular with visitors at the IAU General Assembly in 2024.

BY DR HILARY KAY (THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER) AND MATHIEU ISIDRO (SKAO)

In exciting outreach news, the SKA Observatory and its UK partner the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have been selected by the Royal Society to exhibit together at its prestigious Summer Science Exhibition 2025 in London.

From 1-6 July the exhibition will see over 10,000 members of the public, 1,400 school students and teachers and 1,000 invited guests flock to The Royal Society – the UK’s national academy of sciences – where they will discover the transformative science the SKAO will enable, the cutting-edge technology bringing its radio telescopes to life and the UK’s role in delivering the ambitious project.

The exhibit will feature real hardware, including a full-size SKA-Low antenna and SKA-Mid dish panel, and use immersive and interactive experiences to explore the SKA telescope sites in South Africa and Australia. Accessible content will ensure audiences can learn about radio astronomy in a variety of ways, including tactile models of stellar objects and sounds made by pulsars. Interactive screens will showcase the SKAO science goals. Hands-on demonstrations will allow the public to make their own observations with an affordable portable radio telescope.

It will also provide an opportunity for visitors to interact with colleagues from across the UK who are part of the engineering and scientific teams developing SKA hardware and software and preparing for future science, showcasing the diversity of people and skills involved in the project

“We are incredibly excited to have this opportunity to share and demonstrate SKAO science and engineering to the public at one of the most historically prominent science events in the UK,” said Proposal Lead Chris Pearson of STFC RAL Space.

“Many sciences will be represented but ours will be the only astronomy exhibit. We can’t wait to engage with many different age groups, opening their eyes to the amazing global collaboration that the UK is part of and the ways it will change our understanding of the Universe.”