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- BBC World News
Image source, CSIRO
This new telescope in Australia has already mapped a million new galaxies.
Australian scientists have mapped a million new galaxies and created “a new atlas of the universe” using an advanced telescope found in the Western Australian desert.
The Commonwealth of Nations Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) said it managed to create the atlas in record time, showing unprecedented detail.
The telescope has mapped a total of three million galaxies, with images that reveal double the level of detail of previous investigations, according to the CSIRO study.
Astronomers hope the images lead to new discoveries about the universe.
The CSIRO said the mapping took only 300 hours, while previous studies of the whole sky took years.
With publicly available data, scientists around the world could study “everything from star formation to how galaxies and their supermassive black hole evolve and interact,” said lead author of the study, astronomer David McConnell. .
“We hope to find tens of millions of new galaxies in future studies,” he added.
The initial results were published Tuesday in the Astronomical Society of Australia Publications.
How is this telescope?
Australia Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is a collection of files 36 parabolic antennas collaborating to capture panoramic images of the sky.
The system is located in the southern hemisphere, in the remote interior of Western Australia. It covers an area of 6km at CSIRO’s Murchison Observatory, approximately 700km north of Perth.
Image source, CSIRO
The Askap telescope consists of a collection of satellite dishes in the desert of Western Australia.
By combining the signals from smaller satellite dishes, the telescope creates high-resolution images at a fraction of the cost of a very large satellite dish, CSIRO said.
The huge volumes of data generated at a faster rate than all traffic in Internet of Australia, are then sent to the supercomputer’s processing facility in Perth to create the images.
What did you find?
Askap conducted its first full sky study this year, covering 83% of the sky and three million galaxies in all.
The map was composed using only 903 highly detailed images. Previous studies have required tens of thousands of people to complete a picture of the sky.
Astronomers said the depth and scale were exciting because by cataloging the millions of galaxies beyond the Milky Way, they can perform statistical analysis. These can help understand how it has evolved e How I knowthe universe is structured.
The Askap telescope is one of the precursors of an international project to build the largest radio telescope in the world, the Square Kilometer Array, which will be located in South Africa and Australia.
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