On December 1, 2020, Australia’s national science agency informed that a new telescope located in outback Australia, i.e., a has mapped three million galaxies in a record breaking time of just 300 hours. This type of surveys of the sky earlier took 10 years to complete.
The feat was achieved by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) study of the sourthern sky at the Murchison Radio Astronomy Observatory in Western Australia. The initial results were published in the publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.
The radio telescope, the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), is a powerful telescope with a wide field of view which enables it to take pictures of sky with a sharper detail compared to other telescope. The telescope just combined 903 images to map the sky, while other all-sky radio surveys need tens of thousands of images to accomplish similar tasks.
A telescope that surveys the sky in shorter period of time, i.e., in a few weeks or month, enables astronomers to systematically spot and track changes as the process can be repeated again and again in a shorter gap of time.
The researchers found unusual objects, including some unusual stars that undergo violent outbursts. The data gathered will help astronomers to know more about star formation and evolution of galaxies and black hole.