Project area/S
- Extragalactic Radio Science / Data Intensive Astronomy
Project Details
WALLABY is an all-sky neutral hydrogen survey, on CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope, that will detect and map hundreds of thousands of galaxies. Due to computing and sensitivity limitations, the main survey will use only the inner 30 ASKAP antennas, resulting in images that may blur together neighbouring objects and gaseous features. Nevertheless, for a significant selection of nearby galaxies, WALLABY — using an internally developed high-resolution imaging pipeline — will be able to include all ASKAP antennas to produce higher detailed images, which can enable the detection and separation of finer features.
This project will focus on improving the current high-resolution imaging pipeline by implementing parallel processing, running it in the Australian SKA Regional Centre (AusSRC) asynchronous workflow/event system, and through other code optimisations. Depending on progress (of both the student and the current Pawsey upgrade), the final goal would be to have the improved pipeline working efficiently on Pawsey’s Setonix system.
Student Attributes
Academic Background
A strong background in computing and programming
Computing Skills
Comfortable with Linux and scripting languages (e.g. bash, Python)
Training Requirement
Slurm/HPC environments, parallel processing, Pawsey and Setonix systems
Project Timeline
- Week 1 Inductions and project introduction
- Week 2 Initial Presentation
- Week 3 Familiarisation with current WALLABY high-resolution imaging pipeline and identify inefficient areas
- Week 4 Explore Nextflow and the AusSRC event system for execution of computational pipelines
- Week 5-7 Improve pipeline and implement asynchronous workflow/event system
- Week 8 Test improved pipeline/workflow on Pawsey’s Setonix system
- Week 9 Final Presentation
- Week 10 Final Report
HI Images of galaxies from the ASKAP Survey WALLABY
Additional Supervisors
- Dr. Chandra Murugeshan (CSIRO Space and Astronomy)