Gazing at galaxies far, far away
Radio astronomers are using KAREN’s global reach to participate in astronomical research of epic proportions.
KAREN helps conquer final frontier
AUT University’s 12m diameter radio telescope near Warkworth is now globally networked thanks to KAREN. This means New Zealand radio astronomers can more fully participate in international projects and already the observatory is transferring astronomical amounts of data to Australia, the United States, and beyond.
Professor Sergei Gulyaev, a radio astronomer and Director of the Institute for Radio Astronomy and Space Research, AUT, says they are now transferring data directly from the radio telescope across the Tasman to the VLBI correlator in Perth and the first scientific results look very interesting.
Radio astronomy poised to answer the big questions
Radio astronomy is the study of space and cosmic objects using radio waves. We can study these with a single radio telescope, but when we link with other radio telescopes (even in other countries) in a process known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), this improves resolution and increases the effective aperture of the telescope many times over. This allows us to study supernovae, the birth of stars and supermassive black holes, which give clues to the early stages of evolution of the universe.
Professor Gulyaev says the 1 Gigabit per second KAREN connection, which now allows them to participate in e-VLBI (electronic-VLBI), is a vast improvement on the traditional method of data transfer. “The data packets were too large to transfer over the internet so they had to be recorded onto magnetic tape and shipped to Perth or the United States to be processed on a central correlator. This could take weeks. Now we can participate in research in real-time.”
In May 2010, the KAREN connection allowed the radio observatory to hook up with five other telescopes across the Tasman to act as one giant telescope, linking up over a distance of 5500kms. This e-VLBI linked telescope is expected to make images ten times more detailed than those of the Hubble Space Telescope and has already been used to peer into the heart of a galaxy 14 million light-years way - Centaurus A.
In additional to radio astronomy’s astronomical pursuits, scientists are also developing geoscience applications of which e-VLBI, with its high speed connections, is an essential part. These applications, which Professor Gulyaev says they will participate in, include monitoring tectonic plate motion, the Earth’s rotation, and the Earth’s orientation parameters. They will also be monitoring the Terrestrial Reference Frame as the basis for the World Geodetic System (WGS) and the Celestial Reference Frame as the basis for spacecraft navigation.
Square Kilometre Array bid
In 2012, a decision will be made by an international consortium of space research organisations about where to build the world’s largest radio telescope (a series of linked radio telescope arrays spread over a large area) at a cost of NZ$2.4 billion. A joint bid by Australia and New Zealand has been shortlisted for this Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project. The launch of the radio astronomical observatory and its high speed fibre connection through KAREN show how serious New Zealand is about our participation in an Australasian SKA.
The Warkworth connection was made possible through the Remote Site Connectivity Fund provided by the Ministry of Research Science and Technology (MoRST).
More information
Square Kilometre Array
Institute for Radio Astronomy and Space Research
[Images. Landing page: A radio image of Messier 87 (M87), a giant elliptical galaxy in the Virgo Cluster. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:M87_VLA_VLBA_radio_astronomy.jpg. Bottom: AUT Radio telescope at Warkworth, Auckland]
