New technology installed on CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope today will let astronomers ‘hear’ a wider range of radio waves from objects in space, opening the way to new science.
The new equipment is a receiver, a ‘bionic ear’ for the cosmos which catches radio waves and turns them into electrical signals for astronomers to analyse.
The $2.5 million instrument was developed by CSIRO and a consortium of Australian universities led by Swinburne University of Technology, with funding from the Australian Research Council, Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
CSIRO and Swinburne each designed and built parts of the system.