Using an advanced radio telescope, the Australian SKS Pathfinder (ASKAP), located in the Western Australian desert, the British Commonwealth of Nations Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) has created an atlas of the universe. in record time, showing unprecedented detail, with millions of previously unknown galaxies beyond the Milky Way.
It is his first survey of the entire southern sky. He has broken records by completing it in 300 hours, as it is a process in which previous surveys of the sky had required years; even up to a decade in previous generations of telescopes.
CSIRO’s custom hardware and software processed 13.5 exabytes of raw data generated by the telescope to create the sky map in 300 hours.
A very advanced telescope
The ASKAP telescope, a collection of 36 satellite dishes that work together to capture panoramas of the sky , mapped a total of three million galaxies, obtaining images with twice the level of detail of previous surveys, according to CSIRO researchers. The result is a kind of “Google Maps” of the night sky that you can interact with and use to view details of remote parts of the known universe.
The data is publicly available, so scientists around the world could study “everything from star formation to how galaxies and their supermassive black hole evolve and interact,” commented David McConnell, project leader in his study collected. by the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.
What makes this telescope unique is its wide field of view, as it uses CSIRO-designed receivers, which allow you to take panoramic photos with much sharper detail than before. In total, 903 images – with 15 minutes of exposure each – have been combined to create this map of the southern sky (unlike other surveys that required tens of thousands of images).
“It is more sensitive than previous studies that have covered the entire sky in this way, so we see more objects than we have seen in the past,” McConnell clarifies.
If we take a look at the map in question, it will be incredibly familiar. You may think that you are observing the night sky on a starry night, but almost all the bright points that you will be seeing will not be stars, but entire galaxies.
Do not miss the virtual visit to this new map of the sky.
Why is mapping the cosmos important?
Like maps on Earth, maps of the sky provide astronomers with an extremely important framework for research and statistics . These maps can provide us with information about how certain galaxies behave, whether they drift or are part of a group; they can help to understand how the universe evolved and how it is structured.
The ASKAP telescope is one of the precursors of an international project to build the world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometer Array, which will be located in South Africa and Australia.
Referencia: The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey I: Design and first results Part of: Australian SKA Pathfinder . Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 November 2020 D. McConnell , C. L. Hale , E. Lenc , J. K. Banfield , George Heald , A. W. Hotan et al. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia , Volume 37 , 2020 , e048 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/pasa.2020.41
