{"id":18701,"date":"2016-10-27T00:42:59","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T16:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/media-release\/australian-desert-telescope-views-sky-radio-technicolour\/"},"modified":"2022-12-06T09:19:20","modified_gmt":"2022-12-06T01:19:20","slug":"australian-desert-telescope-views-sky-radio-technicolour","status":"publish","type":"media-release","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/media-release\/australian-desert-telescope-views-sky-radio-technicolour\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian desert telescope views sky in radio technicolour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A telescope located deep in the West Australian outback has shown what the Universe would look like if human eyes could see radio waves.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-37919\" src=\"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/NHW-HIVE.jpg\" alt=\"nhw-hive\" \/>Published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA, or \u2018GLEAM\u2019 survey, has produced a catalogue of 300,000 galaxies observed by the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a $50 million radio telescope located at a remote site north-east of Geraldton.<\/p>\n<p>Lead author Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker, from Curtin University and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), said this was the first radio survey to image the sky in such amazing technicolour.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe human eye sees by comparing brightness in three different primary colours \u2013 red, green and blue,\u201d Dr Hurley-Walker said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGLEAM does better than that, viewing the sky in 20 primary colours.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat&#8217;s much better than we humans can manage; it even beats the very best in the animal kingdom, the mantis shrimp, which can see 12 different primary colours,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>GLEAM is a large-scale, high-resolution survey of the radio sky observed at frequencies from 70 to 230 MHz, observing radio waves that have been travelling through space\u2014some for billions of years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur team are using this survey to find out what happens when clusters of galaxies collide,\u201d Dr Hurley-Walker said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re also able to see the remnants of explosions from the most ancient stars in our galaxy, and find the first and last gasps of supermassive black holes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>MWA Director, Associate Professor Randall Wayth, from Curtin University and ICRAR, said GLEAM is one of the biggest radio surveys of the sky ever assembled.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe area surveyed is enormous. Large sky surveys like this are extremely valuable to scientists and they\u2019re used across many areas of astrophysics, often in ways the original researchers could never have imagined,\u201d Associate Professor Wayth said.<\/p>\n<p>Completing the GLEAM survey with the MWA is a big step on the path to SKA-low, the low frequency part of the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope to be built in Australia in the coming years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a significant achievement for the MWA telescope and the team of researchers that have worked on the GLEAM survey,\u201d Associate Professor Wayth said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe survey gives us a glimpse of the Universe that SKA-low will be probing once it\u2019s built. By mapping the sky in this way we can help fine-tune the design for the SKA and prepare for even deeper observations into the distant Universe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A telescope located deep in the West Australian outback has shown what the Universe would look like if human eyes could see radio waves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4275,"featured_media":10564,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-18701","media-release","type-media-release","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community","category-research"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":false,"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/NHW-HIVE-1000x500.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Curtin","last_name":"University","display_name":"Curtin University"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/18701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/media-release"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/18701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18701"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=18701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}