A world-leading radio telescope operated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has conducted its first survey of the entire southern sky creating a new atlas of the Universe.
Chief Executive of CSIRO, Larry Marshall said the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) mapped approximately three million galaxies in just 300 hours.
Dr Marshall said the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey was like a Google map of the Universe where most of the millions of star-like points on the map were distant galaxies, about a million of which had never been seen before.
“ASKAP is applying the very latest in science and technology to age-old questions about the mysteries of the Universe and equipping astronomers around the world with new breakthroughs to solve their challenges,” Dr Marshall said.
“It’s all enabled by innovative receivers developed by CSIRO that feature phased array feed technology, which see ASKAP generate more raw data at a faster rate than Australia’s entire internet traffic,” he said.
“In a time when we have access to more data than ever before, ASKAP and the supercomputers that support it are delivering unparalleled insights and wielding the tools that will underpin our data-driven future to make life better for everybody.”
Dr Marshall said the telescopes key feature was its wide field of view, generated by new CSIRO-designed receivers, that enabled ASKAP to take panoramic pictures of the sky in detail.
He said a survey team observed 83 per cent of the entire sky by using ASKAP at CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) in outback Western Australia.
“This record-breaking result proves that an all-sky survey can be done in weeks rather than years, opening new opportunities for discovery,” he said.
“The new data will enable astronomers to undertake statistical analyses of large populations of galaxies, in the same way social researchers use information from a national census,” Dr Marshall said.
