Macquarie University and digicam manufacturer Canon are teaming up to express a telescope designed to hunt for and uncover some distance-off galaxies and other enormous objects. The aim is to learn more regarding the evolution of galaxies esteem our beget Milky Formula.
Given that the duty is to hunt for galaxies at hour of darkness, it’s no surprise the project is named after an Aussie arachnid icon.
Known as the Huntsman Telescope, the instrument is being ready on the Siding Spring Observatory reach Coonabarabran, 180 km west of Tamworth in north west Contemporary South Wales. The recent telescope is build to initiate observations on October 1, this one year as piece of the StarFest match hosted by Siding Spring yearly.
The telescope will probably be the principal of its form within the Southern Hemisphere, sweeping the southern sky for light within the considered wavelength piece of the spectrum from faint and much-off objects to search out out about how galaxies originate, grow, retract with other constructions, and what occurs when galaxies collide.
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Huntsman’s Significant Investigator is Dr Lee Spitler, an astrophysicist from Australia’s Macquarie University. Spitler says the telescope’s work also can very smartly be key to knowing the fate of our beget house galaxy. The Milky Formula is on a collision course with its nearest neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy, a galactic pileup build to happen in about 4.5 billion years.
“The Huntsman Telescope is pioneering the plot in which we gape our Southern skies by taking pictures images of the faintest galaxy constructions that broken-down telescopes merely couldn’t,” says Spitler. “The flexibility to detect the faintest and smallest galaxies within the universe will support us realize the capability fate of the Milky Formula within the some distance some distance-off future.”
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Huntsman will form employ of an array of ten commercially available Canon EF 400mm f/2.8 L IS II nice-telephoto lenses in overall frail by official sports or wildlife photographers. The array is impressed by the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, flee by the University of Toronto in Canada, which is in turn impressed by the tessellated eyes of its namesake, the usual-or-backyard dragonfly. The Dragonfly Telephoto Array furthermore makes employ of Canon telephoto lenses.
The L-series of Canon lenses employ a coating to contend with reflections with constructions on the nanometre scale (smaller than the wavelength of the sunshine being seen). These constructions diffuse the sunshine excellent ample to slice support reflections. This contrasts with broken-down mirror telescopes that are polished – the polishing assignment isn’t very ideal and would possibly perchance well presumably introduce subtle errors into observations.
Huntsman’s lenses are furthermore widefield, giving the telescope redundancy in its glimpse to give a raise to accuracy.
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“Canon is proud that our EF-lenses will play a role in serving to Australian scientists tackle some of essentially the most extreme questions in astronomy this day,” says Kotaro Fukushima, Managing Director of Canon Oceania.
One in every of Huntsman’s 5 student technical and science team contributors, PhD candidate Sarah Caddy, says the telescope’s developed abilities will support reply questions beyond even galaxy formation.
“The Huntsman’s recent suite of powerful computers enable each and every lens or ‘gape’ of the Huntsman to operate independently of each and every other. It would possibly perhaps perhaps enable the telescope to autonomously detect extremely-like a flash transient events esteem stellar flares from some distance-off stars, or even more unfamiliar phenomenon esteem aiding the uncover the origin of like a flash radio bursts that proceed to elude astronomers,” says Caddy.
StarFest is on at Coonabarabran on September 30 and October 1.
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