ASKAP opens

Minister for Science, The Hon Chris Evans has officially opened the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), about 315 km north-east of Geraldton in Western Australia.

The CSIRO telescope will allow astronomers to investigate fundamental questions involving dark matter, dark energy, the nature of gravity, the origins of the first stars and galaxies, and possibly things humanity has never witnessed before.

The telescope is made up of 36 identical antennas, each 12 m in diameter and is expected to capture radio images with unprecedented sensitivity and speed over large areas of sky. Each antenna was named by the local Wajarri Yamatji people.

They will be combined with a further 60 dishes due to begin construction in 2016 to form part of the world’s largest radio telescope - the Square Kilometre Array.

Located at the CSIRO-run MRO, the dishes are in the sparsely populated mid-west region of Western Australia - a location which is suitable for astronomy because of its radio quietness.

The Murchison Shire is said to be the “shire without a town”. It stretches across 50,000 km² and 132 people reside in the area. Minister Evans said the site was chosen for its radio quietness to deliver to the world knowledge of the universe over many years.

The data collected from the telescope will be sent to Geraldton and then on to Perth to be studied.

For more information on the ASKAP and the SKA project, visit the website.