SKA: What is a radio telescope?

Scientists are building a giant radio telescope, one hundred times more powerful than the strongest in the world at the moment.

It's called the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and is one of the biggest scientific projects in history.

Unlike an optical telescope, which is a simple piece of glass that makes far away objects appear closer, a radio telescope detects radio waves coming from space.

Radio waves are a special type of light that the human eye can't see.

They can be found coming from clouds of gas where stars are born, as well as the centres of galaxies.

So a radio telescope doesn't see the stars - but instead sees the gas between the stars that produces radio waves.

SKA scientist Dr Nadeem Oozeer explains what a radio telescope is...