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Australia’s SKA Pathfinder telescope has completed the fastest radio survey of the southern sky.
CSIRO
The most detailed and rapid study of the southern sky has helped map around a million previously undiscovered galaxies. Using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder radio telescope, scientists at CSIRO, Australia’s national scientific agency, have reduced the time to complete such an intensive study of space from years to less than two weeks.
In a study, published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia on Monday, the first results of CSIRO’s rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey are reported. The agency describes the survey as a “Google Map” of the universe, providing the most detailed atlas of the southern sky yet.
The key to the new atlas is ASKAP, which is not a single telescope, but a series of 36 dish-shaped antennas stationed in the Western Australian desert. The array listens to radio waves from deep space and can see a region of the sky about 30 times larger than other contemporary radio arrays.
By taking more than 900 images in approximately 300 hours, the team was able to stitch together a complete map of the southern sky with a higher resolution than previous surveys. The images contain a total of 70 billion pixels and lurking in the data are 3 million galaxies, a third of which are new to science.
The map will allow astronomers to study cosmic objects such as supernovae, pulsars, and jets around supermassive black holes in distant galaxies.
“ASKAP is applying the latest in science and technology to ancient questions about the mysteries of the Universe and equipping astronomers around the world with new advancements to solve their challenges,” said Larry Marshall, CEO of CSIRO, in a press release. .
It is just the beginning of the ASKAP journey. RACS was conceived almost as a test bed for what ASKAP will try to achieve. Over the next five years, the radio matrix will begin conducting ten major sky surveys, which will take approximately 1,500 hours to complete per project. Some of these projects will probe the most mysterious phenomena at the ends of the universe.
“We hope to find tens of millions of new galaxies in future studies,” said David McConnell, an astronomer at CSIRO and lead author of the new study.
You can take a virtual tour of the impressive map on the CSIRO website.
