Australian Telescope Maps New Atlas of the Universe In Record Speed (theguardian.com) 41
A powerful new telescope developed by Australian scientists has mapped three million galaxies in record speed, unlocking the universe's deepest secrets. The Guardian reports: The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (Askap) broke records as it conducted its first survey of the entire southern sky, mapping approximately three million galaxies in 300 hours. Scientists used the telescope at an observatory in outback Western Australia to observe 83% of the sky. The result is a new atlas of the universe, according to the telescope's developer and operator, Australian science agency the CSIRO.
The survey -- the Rapid Askap Continuum Survey -- has mapped millions of star-like points; most are distant galaxies, the CSIRO says. About a million of those distant galaxies have never been seen before. Scientists expect to find tens of millions of new galaxies in future surveys, lead author and CSIRO astronomer David McConnell said. The telescope mapped the sky in unprecedented speed and detail. The CSIRO says the result proves that an all-sky survey can be done in weeks rather than years. The instrument has a particularly wide field of view, enabling it to take panoramic pictures of the sky in high detail. The quality of the telescope's receivers means the team only needed to combine 903 images to form a full map of the sky. Other major world telescopes have required tens of thousands of images to put together an all-sky survey. The CSIRO's custom-built hardware and software then processed the 13.5 exabytes (13.5 billion gigabytes) of raw data generated by the telescope. That raw data was generated at a faster rate than Australia's entire internet traffic. The initial results were published in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.
The survey -- the Rapid Askap Continuum Survey -- has mapped millions of star-like points; most are distant galaxies, the CSIRO says. About a million of those distant galaxies have never been seen before. Scientists expect to find tens of millions of new galaxies in future surveys, lead author and CSIRO astronomer David McConnell said. The telescope mapped the sky in unprecedented speed and detail. The CSIRO says the result proves that an all-sky survey can be done in weeks rather than years. The instrument has a particularly wide field of view, enabling it to take panoramic pictures of the sky in high detail. The quality of the telescope's receivers means the team only needed to combine 903 images to form a full map of the sky. Other major world telescopes have required tens of thousands of images to put together an all-sky survey. The CSIRO's custom-built hardware and software then processed the 13.5 exabytes (13.5 billion gigabytes) of raw data generated by the telescope. That raw data was generated at a faster rate than Australia's entire internet traffic. The initial results were published in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.
Square Kilometre Array (Score:2)
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I've had "ska" as a keyword alert on Google news since forever, and it generates hits on;-
1) Touring ska and two-tone bands and
2) Astronomy
I find this an excellent combination of topics.
Re: Square Kilometre Array (Score:2)
Yes, but with SKA, you can map the universe in real gangster time. (Terry Hall is an alien lifeform.)
Minimum brightness? (Score:1)
Sure I can list what I see quickly, if my eyesight is weak.
So: What's the minimum brightness it can still see? How much is Hubble? Webb? Etc.
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So: What's the minimum brightness it can still see? How much is Hubble? Webb? Etc.
ASKAP is a radio telescope. It images 700-1800 MHz.
JWST images in IR.
Hubble images in the visible spectrum.
So comparing them in "brightness" isn't very meaningful.
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Alright, then. Use decibels, whatever.
That’s a lot of trained kangaroos delivering (Score:1)
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"wonder if peta likes their conditions, rain hail or snow"
Not a lot of rain hail or snow in the outback, mate.
in record speed? (Score:1)
in record time
with record speed
(Come at me bro.)
Re: in record speed? (Score:3)
In record speed clearly means the telescopes revolve at 33 1/2 RPM.
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"In record speed clearly means the telescopes revolve at 33 1/2 RPM."
an LP revolves at 33 & 1/3 RPM
But theres also singles and EPs that spin at 45 RPM
and back in the day records spun at 78 RPM, and you wound up the gramophone by hand.
83% of the sky? (Score:2)
I think not. That would be 83% of the southern sky, given that there's a pesky planet blocking the northern sky.
REF: The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey I: Design and first results [cambridge.org]
Faster rate than Australia's entire internet tr.. (Score:2)
Not a high bar.
three million galaxies (Score:2)
I'm sure Carl Sagan mentioned billions of galaxies, so thats a small percentage of the number actually out there.
Re: three million galaxies (Score:2)
There are an estimated two trillion observable galaxies. And Carl Sagan said billyuns and billyuns, surely.
Digging for the "So What" Factor (Score:5, Informative)
1. Why was it important to be able to perform a scan of the entire southern sky so quickly?
2. What was so important about the actual scan results?
In the Guardian article linked in the OP there is a single statement that answers my second question, where the author writes, "Astronomers will be able to statistically analyse large populations of galaxies the same way social scientists use information from a national census."
That sounds like it might actually be really useful. Not only does the significantly improved resolution help - the Guardian article claims that about one million of the distant galaxies have not been observed before - but I suspect the fact that a survey can be performed so quickly might also be useful. Things don't tend to change all that quickly on the cosmological scale, except in those parts of the distant universe where exciting stuff is happening. You know, like black hole mergers that were detected as gravity waves by the LIGO experiments.
If ASKAP possesses the right fidelity, we might be able to compare results taken from different parts of the sky and spot anomalous behaviour over time.
So maybe there's a pretty big "so what" after all... Kudos to the ASKAP folk for an amazing achievement.
Good it's being done now - light and radio polluti (Score:2)
It's good to see this kind of thing being done now, because we might not be able to in 25 years.
When I was a kid living near Denver I could look up and see thousands of stars. On a clear night, I could see the milky way as a band across the sky. Now, even jn the middle of nowhere Oklahoma my daughter can see only dozens of stars, not thousands, because of light pollution. Her kids may never see a star.
We don't see the radio pollution, but it's sure there - virtually everyone carries a transmitter in the p
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It is nice that commercial operators don't intentionally transmit directly on 1420. Unfortunately, anything transmitting on 710 is also transmitting on 1420. As I recall 710 is commercial television - transmitters with thousands of watts. Also anything not trying to transmit, but sending a signal over a wire at 1.4 GHz, is accidentally transmitting.
Similarly for 305 MHz. As I recall, that's remote controls like garage door openers and such. Also anything at 2.8 GHz will have a harmonic at 1.4 GHz.
Then you
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I think radio pollution falls into a slightly different category. I do recall reading about the history of the development of radio telescopes and the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The history in
Now THIS is news for geeks! Awesome!! :) (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously turn in your geek card if this is not interesting to you. I am worried for people's sanity during covid after looking at the first 10 comments. Look at this setup! W00t!! The paper's footnotes provide links to sources on GitHub for crying out loud!
WTF this is great! Finally something great in 2020. It's like I went back in time 25 years to the way the Internet used to be, while also seeing what it might feel like to work as an astronomer these days.
I mean they are releasing things under BSD liscense like: :: Smooth a field of 2D images to a common resolution
beamcon_2D -h
Radio Beam: Tools for Beam IO and Manipulation
And a database about each RACS observation and the resulting data products is available.. git clone ssh://git@bitbucket.csiro.au:7999/askap_surveys/racs.git
Their filesystem is appropriately called "galaxy". Since it is on Lustre (linux cluster), "the intergalactic filesystem". https://www.kernel.org/doc/ols... [kernel.org]
TF paper: https://www.cambridge.org/core... [cambridge.org]
TF computing platform. 472 Cray XC30 compute nodes with total 9440 Xeon Cores, 1.4PB Lustre filesystem (25GB/s), Infiniband out the wazoo
https://www.atnf.csiro.au/comp... [csiro.au]
Fun reading their manual on visualization tools. Section headings like "Using the GNOME desktop" and "Running interactive CASA with X11-Forwarding", "Multi-Scale and/or Multi-Frequency deconvolution" : https://www.atnf.csiro.au/comp... [csiro.au]
Re:Now THIS is news for geeks! Awesome!! :) (Score:5, Informative)
FWIW going down the rabbit hole -- it is unending awesomeness. I discovered a cool Python library called HealPy.
https://healpy.readthedocs.io/... [readthedocs.io]
healpy is a Python package to handle pixelated data on the sphere. It is based on the Hierarchical Equal Area isoLatitude Pixelization (HEALPix) scheme and bundles the HEALPix C++ library.
HEALPix was developed to efficiently process Cosmic Microwave Background data from Cosmology experiments like BOOMERANG and WMAP but it is now used in other branches of Astrophysics to store data from all-sky surveys. The target audience used to be primarily the Cosmology scientific community but currently anyone interested in handling pixelated data on the sphere is very welcome to propose new features.
Wow, something actually interesting on slashdot. (Score:1)
That's a lot of data (Score:2)
Sure (Score:2)
Light pollution in the outbacks is not a problem, kangaroos go to bed early and they don't leave a light on.
faster than (Score:4, Funny)
"That raw data was generated at a faster rate than Australia's entire internet traffic."
That isn't saying much.
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Well, :P
I assume they like to watch porn in slow motion
Hyperbole much? (Score:2)
Setting aside the actual content of the story for a moment...
"...unlocking the universe's deepest secrets"
And this is part of the reason that many people are losing respect for The Media.
Surveying the sky with great speed and accuracy is great - no doubt. But don't use hyperbole to make it seem like Deep Thought has given us The Ultimate Answer.
Is that what they teach in journalism school?
Hyperbole? (Score:2)
So 83% of 50% of the universe, and is it really more accurate than the Gaia data?
83%? (Score:1)
I doubt 83% of the sky is even visible from that part, or any part, of Australia. Probably more like 60%.
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I'm pretty sure that it's 83% of the sky that's visible from Australia. They can't get very close to the horizon.
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The earth does spin you know.
ASKAP is 26deg South, and the elevation limit is 15 deg. This means it can see up to almost 50deg North. Realistically the very northern reaches cannot be observed very efficiently, but 83% of the entire sky is in the right ballpark.
Record speed? So 33 1/3rpm? (Score:2)
I would like to know... (Score:1)
Think of it at that scale: that drive has a 3.5" form factor, you have 12 drives in a 2U storage array; in a 48U rack keeping maybe 6U for power and networking, the rest fits 252 drives - making 39.6 racks for 1 Exabyte. So for 13.5 Exabytes you need 536(ish) racks of these drives just to store the raw data, then you have to house it, power it, cool it.
I get that example my kind of brute
RACS Virtual Tour (Score:2)
I could not see this posted here. You can view the data in your browser in the RACS Virtual tour at
https://www.atnf.csiro.au/rese... [csiro.au]