The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) is an international "centre of excellence" in astronomical science and technology based in

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

, Western Australia, launched in August 2009 as a joint venture between

Curtin University Curtin University, formerly known as Curtin University of Technology and Western Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT), is an Australian public research university based in Bentley, Perth, Western Australia. It is named after John Curtin, ...

and the

University of Western Australia The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany, Western Australia, Albany an ...

. The ICRAR attracts researchers in radio astronomy, contributing to Australian and international scientific and technical programs for the international

Square Kilometre Array The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an intergovernmental international radio telescope project being built in Australia (low-frequency) and South Africa (mid-frequency). The combining infrastructure, the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKA ...

(SKA) project, the world's biggest ground-based telescope array which is in its design phase and the two Australian SKA precursors, the

Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is a radio telescope array located at Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) in the Mid West region of Western Australia. The facility began as a technology demonstrator for the int ...

(ASKAP) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), both located in Murchison. The headquarters of the ICRAR is located in

Crawley Crawley () is a large town and borough in West Sussex, England. It is south of London, north of Brighton and Hove, and north-east of the county town of Chichester. Crawley covers an area of and had a population of 106,597 at the time of th ...

Aims

The ICRAR seeks to: * Create a collaborative environment for scientists and engineers to engage and work with industry to produce studies, prototypes and systems linked to the overall scientific success of the SKA, MWA and ASKAP. * Enhance Australia's position in the international SKA program by contributing to the development process for the SKA in scientific, technological and operational areas. * Promote scientific, technical, commercial and educational opportunities through public outreach, educational material, training students and collaborative developments with national and international educational organisations. * Establish and maintain a pool of emerging and top-level scientists and technologists in the disciplines related to radio astronomy through appointments and training. * Make contributions to SKA science, with emphasis on the signature science themes associated with surveys for neutral hydrogen and variable (transient) radio sources. * Make contributions to SKA capability with respect to developments in the areas of Data Intensive Science and support for the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory.

Participants

ICRAR is an equal joint venture between

and the

, with funding support from the

state government A state government is the government that controls a subdivision of a country in a federal form of government, which shares political power with the federal or national government. A state government may have some level of political autonomy, or ...

. The Centre’s

headquarters Headquarters (commonly referred to as HQ) denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. In the United States, the corporate headquarters represents the entity at the center or the to ...

are located at the UWA, with research nodes at both the UWA and the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy (CIRA).

Management

ICRAR is governed by a board, inaugurally chaired by Bernard Bowen, (February 2009 - July 2016). The current chair is

Ken Michael Ken or KEN may refer to: Entertainment * ''Ken'' (album), a 2017 album by Canadian indie rock band Destroyer. * ''Ken'' (film), 1964 Japanese film. * ''Ken'' (magazine), a large-format political magazine. * Ken Masters, a main character in t ...

, appointed January 2015. The executive director is Peter Quinn.

Pawsey Supercomputing Centre

In 2013, the ICRAR became the first user of the

Pawsey Supercomputing Centre The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre (PSC) is the government-supported high-performance computing national facility located in Perth, Western Australia. Pawsey supports researchers in Western Australia and across Australia through the Pawsey Centre ( ...

, based in

Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...

theSkyNet

As part of its programme, ICRAR utilised

distributed computing A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different computer network, networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by message passing, passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed com ...

to support its own resources.

theSkyNet ''theSkyNet'' was a research project that used volunteer Internet-connected computers to carry out research in astronomy. It was an initiative of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), a joint venture of Curtin University a ...

POGS was a public research project that employed Internet-connected computers to do research in astronomy using BOINC technology. It combined the spectral coverage of the

GALEX Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX or Explorer 83 or SMEX-7) was a NASA orbiting space telescope designed to observe the universe in ultraviolet wavelengths to measure the history of star formation in the universe. In addition to paving the way ...

, Pan-STARRS1, and

WISE WISE may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * WISE (AM), a radio station licensed to Asheville, North Carolina *WISE-FM, a radio station licensed to Wise, Virginia * WISE-TV, a television station licensed to Fort Wayne, Indiana Education * ...

to generate a multi-wavelength (ultra-violet - optical - near infra-red) galaxy atlas for the nearby Universe. It calculates physical parameters such as star formation rate, stellar mass of the galaxy, dust attenuation, and total dust mass of a galaxy on a pixel-by-pixel basis using spectral energy distribution fitting techniques. In September 2014 theSkyNet had 13573 users with credit and 5198 users with recent credit. theSkyNet was powered down in 2018.

AstroQuest

This is the latest citizen science project launched by ICRAR, and aims to help Australian scientists understand how galaxies grow and evolve. Anyone can sign up to become an AstroQuester if you've got access to the internet and a computer or laptop. Users inspect galaxies and let astronomers know if the computer has guessed about the galaxy's light properly or not. You use simple paint tools to paint over the galaxy's light and light coming from other sources. There's even a leaderboard and quests to complete.

History

In 2022, an unusual slow periodic radio transient was discovered in archival data in GLEAM (''G''a''L''actic and ''E''xtragalactic ''A''ll-sky ''M''urchison Widefield Array Survey), catalogued as GLEAM-XJ162759.5-523504, the astrophysical radio source had an 18 minute period with 1 minute long bursts, not matching any then known periodic variables.

References

{{Portal bar, Australia, Astronomy, Stars, Spaceflight, Outer space, Solar System, Education, Science Astronomy organizations Astronomy in Australia Radio astronomy Scientific organizations established in 2009