Major upgrade for Australia Telescope

CSIRO has announced a major, $2.6 million upgrade of the Australia Telescope Compact Array at Culgoora.

The ATCA has been one of the top radio telescopes in the world since it began operations in September 1988.

Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grants have now been awarded for two projects, the Culgoora upgrade and the development of a new receiver for the Parkes radio telescope.

The LIEF grant, worth $530,000, will support the $2.6 million upgrade of the Culgoora facility.

“The existing digital signal processor will be replaced with a GPU-powered processor to double the bandwidth of the telescope’s signal electronics” CSIRO said in a statement.

The project is being led by Professor Ray Norris from Western Sydney University, working closely with CSIRO and seven other university partners.

Professor Norris said the upgrade will enable Australian researchers to address major challenges in our understanding of the Universe, and make more ground-breaking discoveries, across broad areas of astrophysics.

“The upgrade will enable the telescope to study radio counterparts to gravitational wave sources, and it will enable it to make detailed observations of initial discoveries made with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder and other Australian telescopes,” Professor Norris said. Conceived and run by CSIRO,

ATCA ushered in a new era of astronomical discovery in this country.

The construction of the telescope was nearly all Australian, triggering the development of Australian communications companies and playing a key role in the invention of fast WiFi.

Since the Culgoora facility was opened by the then Prime Minister Bob Hawke in 1988, thousands of astronomers from around the world have used the telescope to make fundamental discoveries about the evolution of stars and galaxies.

About 450 researchers and students use it each year to study the molecules in our galaxy, the magnetic fields that thread through galaxies, and the black holes that lie at their centres.

And the ATCA is a significant Narrabri Shire employer, with 15 staff, and its role is expected to continue to grow in the years ahead.