ATCA

 
 

The following was inspired by the work of Alex Cherney who presented his image of "The Planet and the Radio Dish" on Astronomy Picture Of the Day using a stereographic projection. The image is composed of six fisheye images digitally stitched together and reprojected. The images were taken on an exceptionally dark night on the 29th of September 2010 during the CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science (CASS) Radio Astronomy School. In the image most objects appear as shadows, however, prominent in the image is the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), an array of six radio telescopes of which five were in a very compact 75 metre configuration and visible at approximately the 2 - 3 o'clock point (the sixth antenna is not visible as it is approximately 4.4 kilometres away). The Milky Way encircles the array between the 10:00 and 3:00 points. Between 7:00 and 8:00 the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds can be seen. Between 4:00 - 5:00 Jupiter dominates. The increased brightness at 6:00 is associated with light pollution from the nearest town, Narrabri. Those with eagle eyes will note M31 (a source not easily seen from the south) at about 4:00. An annotated version, a Mercator projection and an interactive panoramic version be found below. I’ve also included a daytime image of the array which includes a self-portrait of myself (I’m only a shadow of my former self).

Geoplanet Photos of the ATCA

1 October 2010