School students offered real-time view of space

AUT's Centre for Radiophysics and Space Research has received a $290,000 funding injection from the Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand (REANNZ) which will see students and researchers viewing space in real-time.

AUT will use the grant to build on an ongoing radio astronomy project with partner universities in New Zealand, Australia and Japan. Using the funding and AUT's access to the Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN), Professor Sergei Gulyaev's team will be able to transfer data at much higher speeds and view the depths of space in real-time.

The international project uses a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), which enables researchers to combine and analyse signals received by physically separated radio telescopes.

Professor Gulyaev says the centre will use the REANNZ grant to connect radio telescopes in Australia and New Zealand in one huge radio interferometer. The celestial signals will then be simultaneously processed by the famous New Zealand Supercomputer in Wellington (used for The Lord of the Rings production).

"The end product will be the realisation of an Australasian e-VLBI system which will provide real-time, very high resolution images of exotic astronomical objects, such as active galactic nuclei, relativistic jets and supermassive black holes," says Professor Gulyaev.

AUT also plans to develop teaching materials and a website which would enable New Zealand school students to view the most violent processes in the Universe in real-time.

A number of education institutions and groups have expressed interest in the project including the Stardome Observatory and Planetarium, and schools in Auckland, Wellington, Marlborough and Invercargill.

The grant is a major step in the centre's involvement in the Square Kilometre Array, a $2.5 billion project to create the world's biggest radio telescope. AUT University has invested $500,000 into a prototype 12m radio telescope for the project, which will enable the researchers to collect and process massive amounts of data from space.

AUT is one of eight KAREN member organisations to benefit from $2.6 million in funding from REANNZ.

"With KAREN we will be able to detect extra-galactic radio sources at the edge of the Universe — galaxies that are forming, stars that are exploding," says Professor Gulyaev. "This generates a range of new opportunities for radio astronomy and space research."

ENDS

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