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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) • • • • 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