School of Mathematics & Physics(University of Tasmania)

Alan R. Whitney  MIT Haystack Observatory.

Will give a Public Lecture: Creating a Radio Telescope the Diameter of the Earth

Ever since radio astronomy was accidentally invented in 1931, scientists have dreamed of larger and more sensitive telescopes to dig deeper into the mysteries of the universe.

It was not long before they realized that multiple radio-telescopes connected together could realize many of the benefits of a single very-large (and impossibly expensive to telescope; many of these so-called ‘connected-element arrays’ have been built since the 1960s, with many still operating today.

Still not satisfied, scientists began to explore the possibilities of removing the wire connections which limited these arrays to relatively small geographic areas, allowing the individual telescopes to spread out over very large distances, a step first successfully demonstrated in 1967.

Since then, the practice of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (or ‘VLBI’, as it has become to be known) has progressed to include Earth-size telescope arrays doing amazing work, such as making the most detailed images of some of the most distant objects in the universe, determining the positions of distant extragalactic radio objects to extraordinary precision, determining the size of the black hole at the centre of our galaxy, directly measuring continental drift, and exquisitely measuring the wiggles and wobbles of the Earth as it moves through space.

We will explore the world of VLBI and its many aspects, including a pre-view of exciting instruments planned to be built in Australia and elsewhere.

Thursday 11 February 2010.

Physics Lecture Theatre 1

All Welcome

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites