CSIRO – Astronomy Now

Astronomers create most detailed radio image of nearby dwarf galaxy

28 November 2017 Astronomy Now

Astronomers at The Australian National University have created the most detailed radio image of nearby dwarf galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, revealing secrets of how it formed and how it is likely to evolve.

Mapping the cosmic web with fast radio bursts

21 November 2016 Astronomy Now

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are mysterious flashes of radio waves originating outside our Milky Way galaxy. A team of scientists, jointly led by Caltech postdoctoral scholar Vikram Ravi and Curtin University research fellow Ryan Shannon, has now observed the most luminous FRB to date, called FRB 150807.

Breakthrough Listen searches new-found nearby planet Proxima b for signs of ET

8 November 2016 Astronomy Now

Breakthrough Listen, the 10-year, $100-million astronomical search for intelligent life beyond Earth launched in 2015 by Internet entrepreneur Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking, has just announced its first observations of newly-discovered Earth-size planet Proxima b orbiting the nearest star to the Sun using the Parkes Radio Telescope in New South Wales, Australia.

Australian technology behind the world’s largest radio telescope

5 May 2016 Astronomy Now

Technology developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) will sit at the heart of one of the world’s biggest ever science projects, the Five hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), following an agreement with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC).

‘Birthplace’ of a fast radio burst located for the first time

25 February 2016 Astronomy Now

An international team of scientists led by a Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project scientist has for the first time managed to identify the location of a fast radio burst using a combination of radio and optical telescopes, allowing them to confirm the current cosmological model of the distribution of matter in the universe.

Hundreds of nearby galaxies found hidden behind the Milky Way

9 February 2016 Astronomy Now

An international team of scientists used the 64-metre Parkes Radio Telescope equipped with an innovative receiver to see through the stars and dust of the Milky Way, into a previously unexplored region of space. Hundreds of hidden nearby galaxies have therefore been studied for the first time, shedding light on a mysterious gravitational anomaly dubbed the Great Attractor.

Noodle-shaped plasma lenses may lurk in the Milky Way

22 January 2016 Astronomy Now

According to a team of astronomers led by Dr. Keith Bannister of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science Division in Australia, invisible noodle- or shell-shaped plasma structures could be floating around in the Milky Way. These structures, which focus and defocus radio waves from distant sources such as quasars, could radically change our ideas about the Galaxy’s interstellar gas.

Black hole rethink after 11-year cosmic search fails to detect gravitational waves

25 September 2015 Astronomy Now

One hundred years since Einstein proposed gravitational waves as part of his general theory of relativity, an 11-year search performed with CSIRO’s Parkes telescope has shown that an expected background of waves is missing, casting doubt on our understanding of galaxies and black holes.