Qualla: Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder

Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder: Introduction

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Виктор В, CC BY-SA 3.0. Three million galaxies in 300 hours. That was the result of ASKAP's first rapid survey of the southern sky -- a census of the radio universe so fast and so deep that a million of the galaxies it catalogued had never been observed before. The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder sits on a former cattle station in one of the emptiest corners of Western Australia, 800 kilometres north of Perth, and it is rewriting what we know about the cosmos from a patch of red dirt where the nearest town barely registers on a map.

Image: Виктор В | CC BY-SA 3.0

Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder: Silence as a Resource

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ant Schinckel, CSIRO., CC BY-SA 3.0. ASKAP's location at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara -- the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory -- was chosen for one quality above all others: quiet. Radio telescopes do not gather light. They gather radio waves, and those waves are drowned out by the electromagnetic noise of...

Image: Ant Schinckel, CSIRO. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder: Thirty-Six Eyes on the Universe

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Binarysequence, CC BY-SA 3.0. ASKAP consists of 36 identical parabolic antennas, each 12 metres in diameter, working in concert as a single astronomical interferometer. What makes them unusual is their phased-array feeds -- receivers containing 188 individual elements that give each dish a field of view of 30...

Image: Binarysequence | CC BY-SA 3.0

Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder: Odd Circles and Missing Matter

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Suzyj, CC BY-SA 4.0. The discoveries have been striking. In 2019-2020, pilot surveys revealed Odd Radio Circles -- ORCs -- faint rings of radio emission with no known counterpart at other wavelengths. They appear to be a genuinely new class of astronomical object, and their nature remains under inves...

Image: Suzyj | CC BY-SA 4.0

Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder: Pathfinder to Something Larger

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Binarysequence, CC BY-SA 3.0. ASKAP was always intended as a proving ground. The international Square Kilometre Array -- the SKA -- will be the largest and most sensitive radio telescope ever built, with installations split between Australia and South Africa. ASKAP's role was to test the technologies and tech...

Image: Binarysequence | CC BY-SA 3.0

Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder: The Wajarri Sky

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Suzyj, CC BY-SA 4.0. The observatory sits on the traditional lands of the Wajarri Yamatji people, whose relationship with this sky predates any telescope by tens of thousands of years. The site's official name, Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, comes from the Wajarri language. CSIRO and the Australian Gov...

Image: Suzyj | CC BY-SA 4.0