Download THE AUSTRALIAN ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY

Department of Industry,
Innovation and Science
THE AUSTRALIAN ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY
Our national centre for optical and infrared astronomy
The Milky Way above the dome of the AAO’s Anglo-Australian Telescope. Credit: A. López-Sánchez
Introduction
The Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) provides
Australian astronomers with access to state-of-the-art
optical and infrared telescopes, allowing them to pursue
world-class science. This includes developing innovative
technologies and instruments for these telescopes.
Forty per cent of astronomy in Australia uses optical/
infrared telescopes, and the AAO is the main provider
of these facilities.
The AAO operates the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope
(AAT), the largest optical/infrared telescope in Australia,
and the 1.2m UK Schmidt Telescope. Both are located at
Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales.
Through its International Telescope Support Office the
AAO also supports the use of larger overseas telescopes
by Australian astronomers.
The UK Schmidt Telescope.
Credit: A. López-Sánchez
Formally opened in 1974, the AAO was originally a
bi-national facility of Australia and the UK. Since 2010
it has been fully funded by the Australian Government.
Background image: The Anglo-Australian Telescope
Credit: A. López-Sánchez
Science highlights and impact
The AAO has a long and distinguished record of major scientific discoveries and high-impact research. Recent highlights include:
• obtaining the highest fidelity maps of galaxies in space, yielding the first precise measurements of the amount of matter in the universe
and the relative fractions of ordinary matter, dark matter and neutrinos
• detecting planets orbiting other stars, in particular those with long (Jupiter-like) orbits
• the discovery of the first new type of galaxy in more than 70 years
• fostering the creation of a new research field, Galactic Archaeology, and leading international research through delivering the HERMES
spectrograph and a major research program to measure 1 million stars
• analysing the light of almost a million galaxies, and recording more than a quarter of the galaxy spectra ever taken by humanity
• showing that dark energy is real and furthering our understanding of its behavior
Astronomy is Australia’s leading physics discipline in terms of relative citation rate, and one of only two physics disciplines that perform above
the European average. The AAO is at the forefront of Australian astronomy institutions in terms of scientific papers per professional
astronomer, and the citations to those papers, demonstrating its substantial research impact.
In the 1990s the AAO developed world-leading technology for positioning optical fibres and used it to map the 3D positions of more
than 220,000 galaxies in space, far more than any previous survey. The five-year project (the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey) was one of the
highest-impact pieces of astronomical research ever in Australia: its top 20 papers have collectively been cited more than 9,000 times, and
the top paper alone more than 1,430 times. In 2007 the Royal Astronomical Society awarded the survey team its Group Achievement Award,
describing the work as “an observational tour de force”.
The map of galaxies produced by the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, showing the two fan-shaped volumes sampled in the
survey. Each dot represents a galaxy. The map is colour-coded to show regions of different density. Credit: 2dFGRS team
Benefits from astronomy
Innovation results from complex relationships and knowledge flows between research organisations and firms. Astronomy lies at the
intersection of optics, photonics, electrical engineering, robotics and data science.
Technology and techniques developed for astronomy have been transferred to a wide range of areas:
Medicine
Security
Advanced manufacturing
• medical imaging
• laser eye surgery
• breast cancer pathology
• airport X-ray scanners
• advanced radar systems
• licence-plate recognition
• micromachining
• advanced lithographic moulding
Navigation
Monitoring
Communications
• Global Positioning System (GPS)
• forecasting space weather (solar activity)
• monitoring movement of the Earth’s crust
• optical-fibre communications
• wireless local-area networks (wifi)
A 2015 study found AAO technologies to have potential commercial applications in areas as diverse as medical devices, signal processing
and food-quality testing.
While working on a way to build light-filters inside optical fibres, the AAO, University of
Sydney and the University of Bath (UK) developed a device called a photonic lantern, which
allows a ‘multimode’ optical fibre to be connected to a ‘single-mode’ fibre. Photonic lanterns
have been adopted by telecommunications firms such as Nokia, Phoenix Photonics and
Optoscribe for a technique to increase the bandwidth (number of data channels) of a single
fibre. This could, for example, increase the bandwidth on a submarine cable up to tenfold at
no extra cost, and has the potential to become a multi-million dollar business in the next
decade.
The photonic lantern. Credit: J. Bland-Hawthorn
A major vector for the transfer of knowledge between fields is people. People trained in astronomy can move readily into other fields,
such as data science, where their skills in mathematics, computing, analysis and visualisation are highly valued.
Dr Hercules (Iraklis) Konstantopoulos,
data scientist
At the AAO Dr Konstantopoulos worked
on the SAMI Galaxy Survey, the largest
multi-dimensional survey of galaxies to
date, and in the course of this developed
a new way to visualise data on individual
objects and their place in large datasets.
He now leads R&D in the technology
group of Envizi, a company that analyses
complex energy and sustainability data
for major corporate clients.
Technology capabilities
The AAO designs and builds innovative instruments to extract information from light for its own telescopes, keeping them
at the forefront of research, and for telescopes around the world. The AAO’s key strengths lie in:
• photonics and other optical-fibre technologies that capture and filter light
• positioning systems that place optical fibres with maximum efficiency
• spectrographs that analyse captured light
Capturing and filtering light
SAMI (Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral field instrument)
• uses pioneering ‘hexabundles’ of optical fibres close-packed and fused
together
• can sample light simultaneously from 61 points in 13 galaxies
• multiplies the speed and detail with which galaxies can be studied
Each of SAMI’s 13 optical-fibre bundles (orange leads) captures light
from a single galaxy.
Credit: SAMI team
Fibre Bragg gratings
• tiny filters built inside optical fibres
• remove light generated by Earth’s atmosphere itself
• make the sky darker, revealing faint cosmic objects
Cross-section of a 2-mm optical-fibre bundle for SAMI.
Credit: J. Bryant
Positioning optical fibres with robots
2dF (Two-degree Field Instrument)
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AAO’s first ‘pick and place’ robot
used on the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope
positions 400 fibres to collect light from 400 objects simultaneously
transformed survey spectroscopy – made possible surveys hundreds
of times larger
The 2dF robot mounted on the AAT.
Credit: F. Kamphues
OzPoz (Australian Positioner)
• like 2dF but with a more advanced robot
• commissioned by the European Southern Observatory for its 8m
Very Large Telescope in Chile, one of the world’s leading telescopes
The 2dF robot’s gripper, which lifts the fibres.
Credit: B. Norris
Positioning optical fibres independently
FMOS-Echidna
• designed and built for Japan’s 8m Subaru telescope in Hawai’i
• 400 optical fibres carried in spines like an echidna’s
• the spines move independently
Testing Echidna.
Credit: D. James
AESOP (Australia ESO fibre Positioner)
• now being built for the European Southern Observatory’s
VISTA telescope in Chile
• like FMOS-Echidna but bigger – 2400 optical fibres
Echidna’s spines, holding optical fibres.
Credit: J. Brzeski
TAIPAN
• uses tiny ‘walking’ robots – starbugs – to carry up to 300 optical fibres
• designed and built for the 1.2m UK Schmidt telescope.
MANIFEST (Many Instrument Fibre System)
• being designed for the next generation 25m Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile
• like TAIPAN but bigger – many hundreds of starbugs
Starbugs.
Credit: AAO
Analysing light
HERMES (High Efficiency and Resolution
Multi-Element Spectrograph)
• world-class instrument, able to make high-quality observations
of 400 stars at four different wavelengths in a single exposure
• used on the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope
• enabling the world’s largest ‘galactic archaeology’ experiment
that will determine how our Milky Way galaxy formed
Building the HERMES spectrograph.
Credit: AAO