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A powerful new telescope developed by Australian scientists has mapped three million galaxies at record speed, revealing the deepest secrets of the universe.
The Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (Askap) broke records as it conducted its first survey of the entire southern sky, mapping around three million galaxies in 300 hours.
Scientists used the telescope at an observatory in the outback of Western Australia to observe 83% of the sky.
The result is a new atlas of the universe, according to the developer and operator of the telescope, the Australian science agency CSIRO.
The survey – the Rapid Askap Continuum Survey – mapped millions of star-like points; most are distant galaxies, CSIRO says. About a million of those distant galaxies have never been seen before.
CSIRO CEO Larry Marshall said the survey revealed the universe’s deepest secrets.
“Askap is applying the latest in science and technology to age-old questions about the mysteries of the universe and is providing astronomers around the world with new discoveries to solve their challenges,” Marshall said in a statement.
Scientists expect to find tens of millions of new galaxies in future investigations, said lead author and CSIRO astronomer David McConnell.
The telescope mapped the sky with unprecedented speed and detail. CSIRO says the result shows that a full-sky survey can be done in weeks rather than years.
The instrument has a particularly wide field of view, which allows it to take panoramic images of the sky in high detail. The quality of the telescope’s receivers meant the team only needed to combine 903 images to form a complete map of the sky.
Other major world telescopes have required tens of thousands of images to put together a full-sky survey.
CSIRO’s custom hardware and software then processed the 13.5 exabytes (13.5 billion gigabytes) of raw data generated by the telescope.
This raw data was generated faster than the speed of all Australian internet traffic, Marshall said.
Astronomers will be able to statistically analyze large populations of galaxies in the same way that social scientists use information from a national census.
Federal Minister of Science and Technology, Karen Andrews, said Askap is an example of Australia’s leading radio astronomy capability.
“This new investigation shows that we are ready to make a huge leap forward in the field of radio astronomy,” he said.
The first results were published Tuesday in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.
Australians can take their own virtual map tour on the CSIRO website.
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