ICRAR’s INVOLVEMENT IN Major Astronomical SurveyS
ICRAR is involved in many large-scale astronomical projects and surveys. Some of the surveys that ICRAR plays a lead role in are listed below.
Commensal Real-time ASKAP Fast Transients Survey (CRAFT)
CRAFT is the high-time resolution survey for fast radio transients on the 36-element, 30 deg2 field-of-view Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP). Its aim is to survey the Universe for impulsive astrophysical phenomena at radio frequencies between about 700 and 1500 MHz.
Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS)
DEVILS is a spectroscopic campaign at the Anglo-Australian Telescope aimed at bridging the near and distant Universe by producing the highest completeness survey of galaxies and groups at intermediate redshifts (0.3<z<1.0). The survey will provide data for about 58,000 galaxies to Ymag<21.2, over 6deg2 of sky with >95% completeness in three well studied deep extragalactic fields (COSMOS, ECDFS and XMM-LSS).
Deep Investigation of Neutral Gas Origins (DINGO)
As one of the ten ASKAP-supported survey science projects, DINGO directly addresses a key science goal of ASKAP: studying the evolution of HI from the current epoch to a time when the Universe was two-thirds of its present age.
Epoch of Reionisation (EoR)
The EoR project aims to untangle the evolution of the Universe during its first billion years. This will be achieved through Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) observations of the redshifted hydrogen line signal, emitted by the atomic hydrogen gas that was present in abundance during this epoch.
Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA)
GAMA is a project which is exploiting the latest generation of ground-based and space-borne survey facilities to study cosmology, galaxy formation and galaxy evolution. The GAMA spectroscopic survey of ~300,000 galaxies down to r < 19.8 mag over ~286 deg2 was carried out using the AAOmega multi-object spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) .
GAMA Legacy ATCA Southern Survey (GLASS)
This Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) legacy survey will study Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and star formation using sensitive radio data of the well-studied GAMA G23 field. The main science focus is: evolution of Radio-Loud AGN; Spectral Energy Distributions; and Morphology & Tracing Star Formation With Thermal Radio Emission.
GALACTIC AND EXTRAGALACTIC ALL-SKY MWA (GLEAM) SURVEY
GLEAM survey is the first southern-sky low-frequency survey, and provides images of the Milky Way, external galaxies, radio galaxies and quasars over the entire sky south of Dec +30 at frequencies from 70 to 230 MHz.
GALACTIC AND EXTRA-GALACTIC ALL-SKY MWA EXTENDED (GLEAM-X) SURVEY
The GLEAM-X survey is extending GLEAM by using the extended Phase II configuration of the MWA to make images which have angular resolution a factor of 2 better, and lower sidelobes (better image fidelity).
Imaging Galaxies Intergalactic and Nearby Environment (IMAGINE)
IMAGINE is a Legacy Project on the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to make images of the extended regions around 28 spiral galaxies in Neutral Hydrogen (HI). The survey will study how this gas is fuelling the galaxies. Furthermore it will help in understanding the interaction between galaxies and the surrounding material, the so called Inter-galactic Medium.
interplanetary scintillation (IPS)
Interplanetary scintillation (IPS) is the phenomenon of random fluctuations in intensity of distant compact object, smaller than an arc second, induced by the inhomogeneous structures in the constant wind emanating from the Sun. The effect is very similar to the twinkling of the stars (but not planets or the moon) at night time, however, the twinkling is induced by earth’s atmosphere. Observations with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) can use IPS to identify of objects with sub-arcsecond compact structures from thousands of other objects within a very short time period.
JACPOT
Collimated outflows, or jets, are believed to exist in accreting compact objects, powered by the process of accretion onto the central compact object. In our own Milky Way Galaxy, stellar-mass compact objects may exist in binary systems with less evolved companion stars, and in certain evolutionary phases, material is transferred from those companion stars to the compact objects. Not all of the matter transferred reaches the accretor, with some of the material being ejected in the form of collimated jets, which in some cases may be relativistic.
Murchison widefield array (MWA) pulsar surveys
The MWA is a great instrument for studying pulsars at frequencies below 300 MHz. Observing at low frequencies allows the MWA and ICRAR pulsar teams to take advantage of the steep spectrum of pulsars (the median spectral index is -1.6). The array opens exciting opportunities in several areas of pulsar science.
Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY (WALLABY)
The aim of WALLABY is to use the powerful widefield phased-array technology of ASKAP to observe three-quarters of the whole sky in the 21-cm line of neutral hydrogen (or HI) at 30-arcsec resolution, thereby detecting and imaging the gas distribution in hundreds of thousands of external galaxies in the local Universe.
Wide Area Vista Extragalactic Survey (WAVES)
WAVES is a massively multiplexed spectroscopic survey of 1.6 million galaxies planned to be carried out on the VISTA telescope as part of the 4MOST Consortium’s suite of surveys.
The extended GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (xGASS)
xGASS is a gas fraction-limited census of the atomic hydrogen (HI) gas content of ~1200 galaxies in the local Universe, selected only by stellar mass (M*=109 − 1011.5 M⊙) and redshift (0.01< z <0.05). Our sample is extracted from the overlap of the SDSS spectroscopic and GALEX imaging surveys, and builds on the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) HI-blind survey, which provides the most gas-rich systems.