Australian scientists use a telescope in remote Australia to map 3 million galaxies in space in just 300 hours, hoping to unlock the mysteries of the universe.
The ASKAP radio telescope at Murchison Observatory in Western Australia observed around 83% of the sky, mapping around 3 million galaxies in record time: 300 hours.
According to the Australian Science Agency (CSIRO) – the unit that develops and operates ASKAP – about 1 million of these galaxies have never been seen before.
“ASKAP applies the latest scientific and technological advances to answer long-standing questions about the mysteries of the universe, while helping astronomers around the world achieve a breakthrough to be solved. their challenge, ”said CSIRO Executive Director Larry Marshall.
ASKAP glasses map the universe with unprecedented speed and detail. CSIRO says these results demonstrate that studying the sky can be done in weeks, not years.
CSIRO astronomer David McConnell expects to find tens of millions of other galaxies in the future.
To do this, ASKAP has an exceptionally wide field of view that allows panoramic images of the sky with an extremely high level of detail. The astronomical team only needs to combine 903 images to form a complete sky map.
This is also the difference between ASKAP and other large telescopes in the world, according to the Guardian newspaper. As a result, conventional telescopes must combine tens of thousands of images to produce images of the sky similar to ASKAP.
Subsequently, the device customized by CSIRO processes approximately 13.5 billion gigabytes of raw data captured by ASKAP. Marshall claims that raw data is being processed at a faster rate than all Australian internet traffic.
Astronomers can now compile statistics and analyze large populations of galaxies in the same way social scientists use information from the national census.
The first results are published from December 1 to 12 in the academic journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. Residents can also visit the virtual card on the CSIRO website.
