An intergalactic, three-dimensional map is currently being built in the Western Australian outback. The purpose of this map is to help us understand nearby galaxies and galactic clusters by mapping nearby galaxies up to a billion light years away. This radio-wave survey conducted from our very own outback has the ability to study the universe in a way telescopes cannot.
Phase one of WALLABY (The Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY) has covered 180 square degrees of the observable sky. Over the course of this survey, it’s expected that a quarter of a million galaxies will be catalogued. From this information, researchers can measure dark-matter distribution, the internal motion of galaxies, and how these systems evolve and interact.
Why the outback?
WALLABY is running on the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP). If you haven’t heard of ASKAP before, it’s an innovative imaging radio telescope. It’s located in an extremely radio-quiet zone (the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory) in Western Australia. The location allows projects like WALLABY to find narrow and faint astronomical signals without being swamped by radio interference
Optical telescopes are limited
You may have peered through your telescope when you were out of the big smoke to check out the night sky and been amazed by what you saw. However, radio surveys go even further. For example, if our Milky Way is between us and a galaxy we’re trying to observe, the stars and dust between it make it difficult to see. Radio surveys have the ability to peer through all the stars and dust, allowing observers to see much further.
What WALLABY will do
WALLABY will enable researchers to directly map and detect hydrogen gas. This is the fuel for star-formation. It will provide an enlightening insight into how galaxies tend to form and change. As each year goes by we learn more and more about space and WALLABY is no exception. It’s expected to lead to many new observations and discoveries due to the sheer scale of it.
First public release of data
In mid-November 2022, an important milestone was achieved by the team working on WALLABY. They were able to release to the public the first data produced by the survey. You can dive deep into the data here.
Although we’re aware of the awesome 4X4 trips that are often being taken through the outback, it’s always cool to see it making headlines for other reasons. It’s great to think that something so groundbreaking is happening not only in our country, but on our beloved outback land.
