ASKAP is an SKA-precursor telescope that observes radio waves of a mid-band frequency. Other radio telescopes at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, are low-band frequency telescopes.
While the SKA mid-band projects are now based in South Africa, ASKAP showed just how valuable mid-band studies are, how much data can be acquired, and helped engineers and astronomers refine the technologies for SKA. Now that ASKAP is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, it has a lot to offer researchers from all around the world.
ASKAP is designed to peer deep into our Universe in record time. This speed, which allows it to survey large parts of the sky quicker than any before, is due to its wide field of view. The telescope uses new technology developed by CSIRO – phased array feeds (PAFs) that sit at the focus of each of its antennas to generate this unique widefield view.
Because of this, we regularly see many new cosmic objects being discovered by the researchers using ASKAP.
More information can be found on CSIRO’s ASKAP page.
What is ASKAP looking for?
Researchers have designed surveys that use ASKAP’s unique capabilities to map the structure and evolution of the Universe by observing galaxies and the gas that they contain. Additionally, the ASKAP observatory team has undertaken the RACS project, which is shown in the image above and has already found 1 million new galaxies.
ASKAP Survey Science Projects
During ASKAP’s first five years of operation at least 75% of its time is being used for large survey science projects, each needing more than 1,500 hours to complete and all designed to test the telescope’s unique capabilities. The projects were selected in 2009 by an international panel, with the decision based on scientific merit and operational feasibility.
What has ASKAP and the survey science projects found?
Early science projects, using only 16 of the 36 dishes, produced incredible new imagery of our universe. GASKAP produced an image of the Small Magellanic Cloud in 2017 (a small segment seen above), showing us the tangled web of gas that makes up our neighbouring galaxy. It reveals the galaxy’s vibrant history, including streams of gas reeled in by the gravitational pull of the Milky Way and billowing voids generated by massive stars that exploded millions of years ago.
What’s amazing about this image is that it was made in one shot with the ‘wide-angle’ camera of ASKAP. To do this with traditional technology you would have had to point the telescope in 1,344 different places across the face of the Galaxy and run five observing sessions over 15 months. By contrast, ASKAP took just three nights. Data from CSIRO’s Parkes radio-telescope was added to pick up the faint diffuse emission which is essential for understanding the Galaxy as a whole.
Since then, and with 20 more antennas in use, ASKAP has recorded many more astounding galaxies and phenomena – many of them a mystery.
Read more about:
- Fast radio bursts (FRBs)
- Cosmic webs
- Strange intergalactic dust
- Odd radio circles
- One million new galaxies and a map of the Southern Sky
Visit the ASKAP news page, and our Publications page for more up to date discoveries.
Where is ASKAP data kept?
CASDA provides all ASKAP data (image cubes, basic catalogues, and averaged visibilities) to the public free of charge. Archive products are available as soon as they have gone through a quality control process. The project teams will be providing value-added data products (e.g. large-scale catalogues, rotation measure maps) based on the released data products.
• Visit the CASDA page
• Search the archive using a web interface
• Read the user’s guide to the archive
ASKAP is an SKA-precursor telescope situated at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, in Western Australia.
We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamaji as the Traditional Owners and native title holders of the Observatory site.