New telescope creates universe-map at a record speed
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Australian scientists have used a powerful new telescope to map about 3 million galaxies at record-breaking speed.
This radio telescope is called the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). It is located in the isolated regions of Western Australia.
It was developed and is operated by Australia’s national science agency CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation).
The new telescope or ASKAP mapped 3 million galaxies in just 300 hours or 12.5 days. This is is a record compared to previous surveys that used to take years.
CSIRO says this is a new atlas (a book of maps) of the universe. It covers 83% of the entire sky and shows our galaxies in never-seen-before detail. This is also the first time that ASKAP has done a full-sky survey.
In the future, scientists expect to use ASKAP to find millions of new galaxies.
What are some details about ASKAP?
ASKAP is made up of 36 dish antennas. They work together to take complete photographs of the sky.
The high quality of the telescope’s receivers means that only 903 images need to be combined to form a full map of the sky. Previously, tens of thousands of images were required.
ASKAP is one of the precursors (advance projects) which are part of an international project called the Square Kilometre Array. This will be the world’s largest radio telescope and will be located in South Africa and Australia.
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