CSIRO collaboration forms 'giant' trans-Tasman telescope.
A 12-metre radio telescope in New Zealand has joined up with five in Australia to produce images ten times more detailed than those of the Hubble Space Telescope. The collaboration was enabled by a recently established 1 Gbps Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN) connection, which transfers data across the Tasman Sea. Read more
Imagine if human eyes were so powerful they could read a book more than 20 kilometres away. Scientists in Australia and New Zealand have achieved a similar feat by bringing together the radio signals of six telescopes spread across the two countries to act as one giant telescope. An astronomer, Brian Boyle, from the CSIRO, said the combined telescopes could peer into space and see the galaxy Centaurus A, which was more than 14 million light years away. The link-up between the six telescopes would give scientists a taste of what is possible when the Square Kilometre Array - a combination of more than 3000 telescopes - is built. Read more