News and Updates
MWA images Earth's plasma ducts for first time. Read the journal article by lead author U. Sydney undergrad Cleo Loi and watch the video (viewed nearly 1 million times)!
Australian desert telescope views sky in radio techinicolor: MWA releases GLEAM Survey.
The 2017-B Call For Proposals is now available. Proposals should be submitted through the 2017B proposal form.
Join us for the MWA project meeting, to be held 11 December, 2017 in Sydney, Australia.
- On Saturday 18th March, At Astrofest 2017 Dr John Goldsmith, Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker, and The GLEAM Team were jointly awarded the "Best Timelapse Video" award for the GLEAM/Visible timelapse. The judges said they loved how it showed how astrophotography and science could sometimes be one and the same.
- A ‘radio colour’ view of the sky: the Milky Way is visible as a band across the sky and the dots beyond are some of the 300,000 galaxies observed by the telescope for the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA (GLEAM) survey, and published in Hurley-Walker et al. (2016). Credit: Radio image by Natasha Hurley-Walker (ICRAR/Curtin) and the GLEAM Team. MWA tile and landscape by Dr John Goldsmith / Celestial Visions.
- Some of the new tiles that make up the compact Hexes for Phase II. Credit: Kim Steele.
- The Altair Corporation has awarded Curtin University student Daniel Ung 1st prize in its 2016 Student Competition titled "Embedded Element Pattern Beam Model for Murchison Widefield Array", done in collaboration with Dr. Adrian Sutinjo.
- Check out the updated Google Streetview tour of the MWA site!
- MWA makes first ever image of plasma ducts in Earth's ionosphere. Read the full journal article by Loi et al. 2015.
- Silhouette of an individual dipole. Credit: Natasha Hurley-Walker
- The Moon (lower left dark "hole") occults diffuse Galactic emission. Credit: R. Wayth and the MWA team.
- 28 April 2013: Early look at a test drift scan while commissioning the MWA. Credit: Andre Offringa and MWA Science Commissioning Team
- Observations of the Moon at 72-103 MHz. The Moon is visible because it reflects radio waves from transmitters on Earth, including the FM radio band. The the Moon only reflects radio waves back to Earth from the center of its disk and extragalactic sources close to the Moon actually disappear as its disk eclipses them. Credit: N. Seymour, N. Hurley-Walker (ICRAR/Curtin), B. McKinley (Melbourne) and the MWA team.
- Outrigger tile about 1.5km from the core of the array, with a view of the breakaway behind it. Credit: Natasha Hurley-Walker
The Telescope
The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a low-frequency radio telescope operating between 80 and 300 MHz. It is located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) in Western Australia, the planned site of the future Square Kilometre Array (SKA) lowband telescope, and is one of three telescopes designated as a Precursor for the SKA. The MWA has been developed by an international collaboration, including partners from Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and the United States. Read more about the telescope...
The Science
The MWA is performing large surveys of the entire Southern Hemisphere sky and acquiring deep observations on targeted regions. It enables astronomers to pursue four key science objectives. The primary endeavor is the hunt for intergalactic hydrogen gas that surrounded early galaxies during the cosmological epoch of reionization. The MWA will also provide new insights into our Milky Way galaxy and its magnetic field, pulsing and exploding stellar objects, and the science of space weather that connects our Sun to the environment here on Earth. Read more about MWA science...
