Observations of the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization with the SKAO: Observational Lessons Learned from Precursors and Pathfinder Instruments

arXiv:2606.26072 · astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.CO · Submitted 2026-06-24 · Read on arXiv

Eloy de Lera Acedo, James Aguirre, Dominic Anstey, Nichole Barry, Gianni Bernardi, Somnath Bharadwaj, Anthony Brown, Jean Cavillot, Suman Chatterjee, Samir Choudhuri, Tyler Cox, John Cumner, Abhirup Datta, Fred Dulwich, Khandakar Md Asif Elahi, Andrew Faulkner, Sukhdeep Singh Gill, Quentin Gueuning, Daniel C. Jacobs, Nicholas Kern, Piyanat Kittiwisit, Yuchen Liu, Zachary Martinot, Ashish Mhaske, Florent Mertens, Vincent McKay, Satyapan Munshi, Steven Murray, Chuneeta D. Nunhokee, Oscar Sage David O'Hara, Samit K. Pal, Robert Pascua, Rashmi Sagar, Shouvik Sarkar, Shiv Sethi, Sarod Yatawatta, Oskar Zetterstrom

astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.CO

Submitted: 2026-06-24

Comments: Published in Advancing Astrophysics with the SKAII (AASKAII), 2026(arXiv:2606.20366).Report-no:AASKAII/deLeraAcedo01. Advancing Astrophysics with the SKAII (AASKAII) outlines the transformative scientific advances that will be enabled by the SKA telescopes

Code: https://github.com/zacharymartinot/redshifted_gaussian_fields

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

The gist: This chapter summarizes the observational lessons learned after two decades of observations of the Cosmic Dawn (CD) and Epoch of Reionization (EoR) with SKAO pathfinders and precursors.

Terminology

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the observational lessons learned after two decades of observations of the Cosmic Dawn (CD) and Epoch of Reionization (EoR) with SKAO pathfinders and precursors. We will describe the effort towards building accurate simulation pipelines for actual observations and summarize the approaches that different groups have taken to calibrate and mitigate systematic effects such as sky model incompleteness, limited instrument models and antenna mutual coupling. We conclude by discussing the impact that these lessons may have on the design and analysis of upcoming SKAO observations of the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization.

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