Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory News
December 2021
We come to the end of another year, and I’d like to begin this edition of the MRO News by thanking you all for your support throughout 2021. It’s been just under two years since the MRO site entity was established in Perth, and over this time it’s been my pleasure to work alongside the local community as I build my team and we work to manage the MRO.
I was glad to be at the children’s week event in October watching the energy of all the kids as they jumped, played with the guest ‘astronaut’, created some space art, and enjoyed a look at the stars with our team. Thank you to the Shire for inviting us to participate, we had a great time engaging with the local kids and sharing some activities. Another event since the last edition was the Perth Astrofest, held annually down in the city. Whilst the skies in Perth are less impressive than what you can see from the Murchison, the MRO and the region was showcased at the indoor part of the event at both the MRO and SKA booths.
Recently the filming activity we’ve had on site over the past 18 months has come to fruition with the release of multiple productions. Following on from the Star Dreaming premiere mentioned in our last edition, Virtual Reality documentary Beyond the Milky Way has launched at the WA Museum Boola Bardip in the last few weeks. This unique film tells the story of the ancient landscape, the instruments already on site at the MRO and the lead up to the SKA. If you’re down in Perth it’s showing through to February and will tour in 2022 – including a planned stop at the Museum of Geraldton.
If you haven’t had a chance to see the 1 Man and a Bike Murchison episode yet I encourage you to have a watch, the drone footage beautifully showcases the region. You also may like to watch Channel 7 Perth in the new year, as ‘The Hidden Universe, discover the SKA’ will air on 2 January, featuring some of the story of what the SKA is hoping to achieve from the site in the Murchison.
The site entity team continues to grow with Andrew Whitmarsh joining in early December as our Boolardy land care facilitator. Andrew brings with him his long experience in the Murchison as a local station owner, I’m glad to have his local knowledge on my team.
Finally, thank you all for the warm welcome of team CSIRO at the Murchison Shire Christmas Tree over the weekend, Chris, Sim, Kirsten, Brett and Jenni, and Rochelle and Noddy all tell me it was a fantastic evening and fitting end to the year.
Merry Christmas and a safe holiday season no matter how you celebrate, I’m looking forward to seeing you in 2022,
Bec
Image: Bec and new SKA-Low telescope deputy director George Simpson working on the SKA project in Australia booth at Perth’s Astrofest.
Season’s greetings to everyone in the Murchison region. Despite major global challenges, 2021 has been a highly productive year for the SKA project, bringing us closer to the benefits that will flow from telescope construction and operations.
In the past 12 months:
• The SKA Observatory was established, with Australia as a founding member. This is the international organisation that will oversee the delivery of the telescopes in Australia and South Africa. 16 countries who share a common vision are now participating in the project.
• Australia, South Africa and the UK signed host country agreements with the SKA Observatory. These essential agreements set out the responsibilities of each party and formalises arrangements for construction, including providing access to the site as soon as an Indigenous Land Use Agreement is in place.
• Construction procurement processes have begun in earnest, including for major infrastructure contracts available to Australian businesses. In several cases, Mid West business involvement has been mandated for these contracts.
With construction on-the-ground now not far away, I’d like to thank everyone in the region for their patience. 2022 promises to be a historic year for the Murchison and the international astronomy community. I for one, can’t wait. I wish you all a safe holiday season.
Ben Scandrett, Executive Manager, Australian SKA Office
Image: The Australian SKA office getting into the Christmas spirit with their model SKA-Low antenna!
The pace of activities for SKA continues to increase with two big areas of focus – recruitments and procurements.
There are a number of procurements occurring right now – please keep your eye on the SKAO procurement portal, or contact Anthony Holzwart (Australia’s SKA Industry Liaison Officer) if you have questions about either the top level tier 1 contracts, or as a tier 2 or 3 provider wishing to connect to tier 1 contracts to provide subcontracting services. As you may know, the principle of Fair Work Return means that each country partnering in funding the SKA receives some of the construction work – potentially ranging from custom digital processing systems to cables, fibres, power systems, infrastructure, computing and software.
On the staff front, there are many recruitments underway as we continue to staff up both the Geraldton and Perth offices. Some of these positions are direct SKAO recruitments and some are CSIRO on behalf of the SKA, so if you’re interested, keep an eye on the CSIRO job portal and the SKA’s site.
We have also commenced buying our fleet of vehicles – you will soon see our first ones in Geraldton with our distinctive new SKAO livery!
Finally I’d like to thank everyone who is helping get SKA underway in Australia – the many local groups such as the Murchison Shire Council, WYAC and WEL, MWDC, along with the staff in our various partner institutions and the Western Australian and Australian Governments. I’d also like to gratefully acknowledge the support we have received from the Wajarri in the continuing discussions around the ILUA and acknowledge them as the traditional owners of the site on which we will be building SKA-Low in Australia.
This, the 2nd year of COVID-19, has been an enormous challenge to the SKA project. You will hear people say that COVID has taught us we don’t need to do face-to-face activities to exist and develop. I think it’s the opposite: I think while we can do some interactions remotely (over the apparently never-ending Zoom!), for many activities face-to-face is the only way. I’m sure all of you have had many versions of this challenge and I hope 2022 brings some relief for everyone in this area – and of course most importantly of all, that you all stay healthy!
Please don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions or would like to set up a chat.
On behalf of the entire SKAO office, Sarah Pearce (SKA-Low Telescope Director) and I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and new year break and greatly look forward to being able to see you sometime in early 2022!
Ant Schinckel, SKA-Low Site Construction Director, SKAO
In mid-October CSIRO staff spent a few days out in the Murchison at Pia and the MRO with the kids from the community school.
Astronomers Katie Jameson and Alec Thomson shared their backgrounds and paths into astronomy with the students, along with some hands-on activities mid talk using iron filings to show magnetic fields around magnets.
Alec related the activity back to his research on magnetic fields in Jirdilungu (Wajarri for the Milky Way) where they could see the magnetic field shapes from the activity out in space. Students also had the chance to set up a scale model of the Solar System and then Katie led an activity on Garangu (Wajarri for the Sun) that ended with again seeing the magnetic field shapes in solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
The next day took the kids out to the MRO for a visit to the telescopes with Katie and Alec, as well as Leonie Boddington, Inna Donaldson and Rochelle Desmond from our Geraldton office. Next to an ASKAP dish everyone had the chance to play a game matching ASKAP radio images with their corresponding visible light telescope image. It was a difficult challenge, and everyone was impressed by the number of students that worked together and identified the correct image pairs!
Katie Jameson (ATNF Science Bolton Fellow) and Alec Thomson (ATNF Science CERC Postdoc)
Image: Katie Jameson and Alec Thomson lead an activity with the Pia students and teachers to see if they can match optical and ASKAP radio images of the same area of the sky – it was a difficult challenge!
Strange radio signals from within our galaxy
As the ASKAP survey science teams are making progress on Phase II of their pilot surveys in preparation for full surveys next year, exciting results keep rolling out from Phase I. ASKAP was headlining international news when researchers from the Variables and Slow Transients team announced the discovery of a mysterious signal coming from our galaxy. Professor Tara Murphy from the University of Sydney said: “We have been surveying the sky with ASKAP to find unusual new objects. This object was unique in that it started out invisible, became bright, faded away and then reappeared. This behaviour was extraordinary."
"We’ve never seen anything like it," said lead researcher Ziteng Wang, who is a PhD student at the University of Sydney.
Despite thoroughly looking at all possible options for this flashing object, there wasn’t one that matched.
"At first we thought it could be a pulsar – a very dense type of spinning dead star – or else a type of star that emits huge solar flares. But the signals from this new source don’t match what we expect," Mr Wang said.
Researchers will be keeping a close eye on this mysterious object, searching for more clues with telescopes from around the world.
Aidan Hotan, ASKAP Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO and Rachel Rayner, Communications Advisor, ASKAP, CSIRO
Image: An ASKAP image of the Galactic Centre region with small insets showing the source turning off and on in data captured by ASKAP. Credit: Ziteng Wang et al.
I can’t remember the last time I saw our site lead in person, rather than through a screen while he was repairing something in the middle of the Murchison! He’s been extra busy preparing the telescope for the Christmas shut-down period, when the extreme summer temperatures are more likely to cause havoc to our systems, and there’s fewer people around to perform maintenance. Andy will use a GPS locator to walk out to one of our remote sets of antennas, or ‘tiles’, that needs a bit of TLC; at the moment he’s the lucky guy in charge of replacing thousands of old antenna cables. The next step is to open up the control box and unplug the ethernet cable inside that is usually used for sending command signals to the tile. He’ll connect it to his laptop, and hey presto, he no longer has any excuse for not joining our meetings! It’s a great way to keep in touch while he works in a very isolated environment, but with the millions of flies around we’re sure he’ll never be lonely.
Mia Walker, Project Officer, MWA
Would you like to learn more about Mia? ICRAR have recently published a ‘Meet an Engineer’ video featuring Mia and her background.
Image: Andrew ‘Andy’ McPhail joining an online meeting from a remote MWA tile. Credit: Mia Walker, MWA
Someone very familiar to Murchison locals has recently joined us in the last few weeks. We’re pleased to welcome Andrew Whitmarsh as Boolardy Station land care facilitator in the MRO Site Entity team.
Born and bred in Pemberton, Andrew spent some time farming in Dongara before joining the Murchison community in 2005 after the purchase of two local stations. You’re no doubt familiar with him as Shire deputy president, and he’s now adding on the role of managing Boolardy to his local activities. Welcome Andrew!
Image: Andrew Whitmarsh and his family at the Murchison Christmas Tree gathering on the weekend.
Summer night skies showcase the constellation of Orion, the hunter, clearly visible in the northern sky from the evening onwards. Four bright stars form the large square. They include the bright red supergiant Betelgeuse at bottom right and the bright blue star Antares at top left. Three stars of similar brightness form the belt of Orion with three more stars forming the belt. More colloquially we see these form the “saucepan” as Orion the hunter is standing on his head for Southern hemisphere observers. The middle star of the sword (or “handle”) appears as a faint blob and is actually M42, the Great nebula of Orion. This is a massive star forming region, the closest to us and is a wonderful sight in a telescope.
Below and to the left of Orion is the group of stars known as Pleaides, or Nyarluwarri to the Wajarri. In many cultures this asterism of stars is thought to represent seven sisters.
Early in January Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter form a line low in the western evening sky with the crescent Moon visible among them on 4 and 5 of January.
For early risers Mercury and Saturn appear again in late February with Venus and Mars shining brightly above them in the pre-dawn sky.
Rob Hollow, CSIRO
Images: Produced using Stellarium, www.stellarium.org
Chris and the team delivered a model SKA antenna to the Shire during the Christmas Tree for display at the Settlement, pictured here with Chris, Bill and Rossco doing their best album cover impression.
Santa put in an appearance at the Christmas tree, with a present for each of the kids and lollies galore.
The team conducting a small permitted controlled burn out at site near the solar hybrid power station soon after their bushfire fighting safety training.
Fire water pump testing at Boolardy.