Giant Australasian 'e-telescope' launches tonight
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Australasia’s first virtual e-telescope will come to life tonight (February 8), when six Australian and New Zealand radio telescopes link together in real time.
Researchers from AUT University’s Institute for Radio Astronomy and Space Research (IRASR), Australia’s CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), the University of Tasmania and Curtin University will use a technique known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (eVLBI) to collect huge amounts of data simultaneously from six radio telescopes observing a very remote quasar.
All the radio telescopes will be operated remotely from one place – AUT University’s Warkworth Observatory, created with help from corporate sponsors IBM and Telecom.
KAREN connection
Data will be streamed from the telescopes to the Narrabri, NSW processing centre via New Zealand’s high capacity fibre optic KAREN (Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network) network (operated by FX Networks domestically and TelstraClear internationally) and its Australian counterpart AARNet, processed in real time, and the results will be immediately seen on a big screen in Warkworth. Last week, KAREN received a $4 million boost in government funding.
The aim of this initial trial is to ensure that the data from all the telescopes is correlated successfully, which will be seen as a spike (interferometric fringe) on the screen at Warkworth.
“If we are successful in this demonstration, the next step will be to actually synthesise an image of the object we are observing in real-time,” IRASR director Professor Sergei Gulyaev said.
Details of remote quasars and radio galaxies
In establishing this virtual telescope, New Zealand’s geographic location has been an advantage: most of the Australian telescopes are based along similar longitudinal lines, but the addition of AUT’s dish more than 2500 kilometres to the east will provide a much greater resolution and improved view of very fine details of very remote radio galaxies and quasars (a quasar is thought to be a supermassive blackhole at the centre of a galaxy).
$4 billion megascience project in the balance
“This demonstration is an important step in the Australasian SKA (Square Kilometre Array) bid, which will be based on exactly the same eVLBI technique,” said Professor Gulyaev. “We are excited to try out this technology and show what is possible when Australia and New Zealand radio astronomers join forces.”
The SKA is a megascience project, budgeted at $4 billion, that will involve up to 5000 dishes spread across Australia and New Zealand (or rival contender South Africa).
The SKA megascience project, involving up to 5000 dishes across Australia and New Zealand (or rival contender South Africa), will cost around $4 billion.
Art Vanderlay
Tue, 08 Feb 2011
Tue, 08 Feb 2011
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Giant Australasian 'e-telescope' launches tonight
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