Melbourne inventors create a $10 solar light that generates carbon credits and transforms lives

A Melbourne invention is brightening the lives of hundreds of thousands of flood refugees in Pakistan by bringing them sustainable solar light.

The governments of Britain, the USA, Japan and the EU have all bought the new lights and supplied them to refugees via the International Organisation for Migration.

The life-transforming solar light was invented by an economist based in Melbourne who was working in the energy industry.

“We created this light for the billion people who live off the grid and survive on less than a dollar a day. Buying fuel for a kerosene lamp can take a third of their income, the kerosene fumes are polluting, and the lanterns often start fires,” says Shane Thatcher, the chairman and CEO of illumination, which he founded in 2010.

The new solar light, called Mandarin Ultra, costs less than $10 a unit delivered. It’s water-resistant, bright, long-lasting, robust and “fit-for-purpose”. The light’s creators have combined smart technology, good, simple design and economics to tackle a perennial problem for poor people across the world – life stops at dusk unless you’ve got light. The light costs around a week’s income, but that’s a fraction of the cost of alternatives. And it’s a one-off investment that will last for at least three years.

The Mandarin Ultra, has been quietly selling for two years and is already being used by communities across Africa, south Asia and south-east Asia. But the purchase of 20,000 lights by the British Department for International Development (DFID) just before Christmas was a game-changer. A series of orders followed and as of today, 80,000 lights have been delivered to the Sindh Province in Pakistan.

“In the past refugees sometimes were given kerosene lights, but when the fuel runs out, it’s difficult to buy in the camps. And the lamps are crude and dangerous – fires are common.

“The solar lights transform life in the camps. Children can read, and women and children can move around the camps more safely at night.”

It costs a fraction of competing designs because it was designed with the income level of the target customers and the generation of UN accredited carbon credits in mind.

“What makes the lights affordable is the generation of carbon credits as the lights are sold and used. We worked with our alliance partner, CarbonSoft (a Standard Bank joint venture) on the complex accreditation program,” says Liz Aitken, illumination’s CFO.

illumination is continuing to improve the lights, which are made in China to tight specifications.

And more affordable, smart devices are on the way.

“Mobile phones are dramatically changing how the poor and remote communities farm, trade and access health and other government services. But many communities in Africa for example have no access to power. So people may have to walk many kilometres and then pay for access to a charger. We think we can change that,” says Shane.

The issue

More than 1 billion people in the developing world use kerosene or candles for lighting.

The benefits of replacing kerosene lanterns with solar-powered lights are to:

• Reduce poverty: Kerosene accounts for up to one third of household budgets, eliminating this expense means illumination customers have more money to spend on food, education and medicine;
• Improve health and safety: Kerosene fumes are toxic causing respiratory/eye ailments and cancer, and the toppling of kerosene lamps is the largest cause of house-fires;
• Improve personal security: the provision of light in refugee camps vastly reduces the incidents of rape;
• Improve education: Solar lights provide better and less expensive light than kerosene, enabling children to study longer and safer at night;
• Reduce greenhouse emissions: reducing greenhouse gas emissions from burning kerosene alleviates global warming;
• Conservation of biodiversity: high kerosene prices push some people to use firewood, exerting pressure on forest resources and reducing biodiversity.

The light

Mandarin Ultra is the cheapest, quality solar light in the world. For the first time it makes renewable energy accessible to the world’s poorest people.

The Mandarin Ultra is ultra-bright, long lasting and highly durable. It was specifically designed to survive everyday use in the harsh conditions of the developing world, and has been proven on the ground in rural Tanzania over several years.

The Mandarin Ultra is a high brightness, low cost, portable and robust solar powered light. Specifically designed for everyday use in the harsh conditions of the developing world, it has a number of key attributes that make it uniquely suitable for the purpose for which it was designed:

Performance:

• Ultra bright light: more than 40 Lumens from 12 super bright LEDs (4 times brighter than a kerosene lamp)
• Produces bright light for 6 to 8 hours on full charge
• Fast solar charging: 6 to 8 hours
• Long lasting and environmentally responsible Nickel Metal Hydride rechargeable batteries

Design:

• Suitable for indoor and outdoor use
• Single unit with no external pieces, cables, etc.
• Light and compact for easy, inexpensive transport
• Side lugs for ceiling, wall or table-top placement
• Optional hanging kit

Reliability/durability:

• Robust casing to ensure durability from impacts
• Internal wiring minimised and robust to ensure little risk of loose or disconnected wires
• Water and weather-resistant: rated IP44
• 3 year lifetime
• 1 year warranty

The Mandarin is also made entirely from environmentally responsible and recyclable materials.

The difference it makes
“Early one evening as the sun was going down there was a lot of noise coming from the house next door to ours. When we went out to find out what was going on we found our neighbours yelling about a snake being in their house and that they could not find it. They usually use kerosene for light however because they had no money on this week they could not buy any. So it was dark in their house and their son had seen a snake slither inside. There was no way they could sleep in the house with a snake in there. We have a Mandarin so we always have light. with our Mandarin (and some sticks!) we were able to go into the house, find the snake and chase it outside into the bush. Our neighbours could then sleep soundly.”

All too often the world is hit by man-made and natural disasters. People lose their homes, their belongings and sometimes their lives. Often those worst affected are those with little to begin with, those with no savings, no government safety nets or support structures. Long after the disaster has left our television screens many of those affected are still living in dire circumstances.

The Mandarin Ultra has found a useful home in the relief packs given to the victims of disaster the world over. It is the first solar light being used extensively in disaster relief. It requires no fuel, is safe, is robust enough to survive the harshest of conditions and it is compact and light so it can be moved about easily and in very large quantities.

• Pakistan: illumination is working with several Aid agencies on the ground in Pakistan to deliver safe, clean light to the victims of the recent devastating floods around the Hyderabad region of Pakistan. As far as we know this is the first very large scale distribution of solar lights as part of a relief effort.
• Liberia: illumination has worked for some time with Concern International, an Ireland-based NGO, to deliver solar lights to people from surrounding conflicts who have sought refuge in Liberia.
• Japan: Relief work is of course not just limited to the developing world. After the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, we worked with several NGOs as well as Virgin Atlantic to donate solar lights to families who were left without electricity.

Donor Countries/Organisations for Pakistan effort

Kerosene Costs Across the World

Source: illumination has completed three independent kerosene usage trials.

The company

illumination is a new type of business, it is committed to providing returns to its shareholders, but also measures itself on the social and environmental good it generates. We have gathered a team of very professional people from a wide variety of backgrounds. They all however share a commitment to improving the lives of those in developing countries and to reducing the world’s greenhouse emissions… and to having a bit of fun along the way. We are also located across the world (very important given the nature of our business) and we have offices in Hong Kong, Ningbo, Tanzania, Melbourne and London.

illumination is different because we and our distribution partners are able to sell our lights at a price that is far lower than other lights. Yet despite the low price, our light is also bright, long lasting and very durable. So for the first time, the vast numbers of the world’s poorest people can now afford quality solar lighting.

We can sell at such a low price because sales of our lights generate carbon credits under the UNFCCC’s Clean Development Mechanism. This additional revenue for us and/or our distribution partners eliminates the need for high sales margins, and enables us to sell our high-quality lights at a price that many more people can afford. This innovative approach means we are able to help more people to start using solar power, reduce more greenhouse emissions, and still make returns for ourselves and our distributors.

Solar lighting is just the beginning for illumination. In the coming months we will introduce a radio. Radio is a highly popular and important form of entertainment in developing countries, however the batteries are expensive. Mobile phones are also hugely popular however charging them is difficult and expensive, so we are also developing an inexpensive sustainable, mobile phone charger.

Shane Thatcher, illumination Chairman and CEO
After discovering an academic interest in emissions trading at university some 15 years ago, Shane also discovered that at that time such an academic interest didn’t translate into a paying job. So after 15 years waylaid in Trading and Executive Management in the electricity business he has come full circle and found a use for his early dabblings in emissions trading as founder, Chairman and CEO of illumination.

Images and Video
About Illumination Solar

The Murchison Widefield Array is a telescope with no moving parts. Credit: David Herne, ICRAR

Far outback in Western Australia, 32 tiles—flat, stationary sensors—each carrying 16 dipole antennas have begun collecting scientific data.

These first tiles will ultimately form part of a much bigger array of 512 tiles, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA)—Australia’s second Square Kilometre Array (SKA) demonstrator project. Like CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP), the MWA is being built at the remote, radio-quiet Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO).

The MWA is designed to study celestial radio sources at low frequencies, a poorly known part of the radio spectrum between 80 and 300 megahertz. The array is ‘steered’ electronically, which means the direction the telescope points depends entirely on how the signals from its stationary antennas are combined and processed.

The facility is a collaboration between several universities and research institutions in the US, Australia and India. The site for the full telescope was prepared in 2010, and the final array will begin operating within a couple of years, says MWA Board Vice Chair, Steven Tingay of Curtin University, the International Managing Organisation for the $30 million facility.

As the working tiles are being tested for the final array, the MWA itself is testing technologies to be used when the world’s largest telescope, the SKA, is built. But the MWA will be a powerful instrument in its own right, and already has been earmarked for three significant research projects.

One will take measurements of the Sun and material in the plasma surrounding it; another will survey low-frequency radio emissions across the sky, particularly those that are transient. And the third will detect and analyse hydrogen from the ‘Epoch of Re-ionisation’ in the early Universe when the gas changed from being almost neutral to extensively charged or ionised.

A HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE IMAGE OF SOME OF THE EARLIEST GALAXIES THAT MAY HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR ‘LIGHTING UP’ THE COSMOS. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, R. WINDHORST (ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY) AND H. YAN (SPITZER SCIENCE CENTER, CALTECH).

When did the first stars begin to shine?

After the Big Bang, the Universe was a cold, dark place—until the first galaxies and stars formed and shone their light into the gas that pervaded space, resulting in the re-ionisation of cosmic hydrogen.

The state of the Universe during re-ionisation has been simulated using computer models by Stuart Wyithe, a physicist at the University of Melbourne. Stuart is probing to determine exactly when and how re-ionisation occurred, what kind of stars were responsible and whether black holes were involved.

“We have an idea of what the Universe was made of, and we have a theory of gravitation and how structure formed,” says Stuart. “The goal is to use that framework to try and understand how the first galaxies interacted with the intergalactic medium around them.”

That’s where the MWA comes in. “Current Hubble [Space Telescope] pictures of the early Universe do not reveal enough star formation to have re-ionised the Universe, so there must have been something else contributing to it,” adds Stuart. “They could be less luminous galaxies, or they could be something else.”

Stuart and his colleagues now plan to use the MWA to peer back toward the Universe’s ‘Dark Ages’, to see if their computer simulations are right.

Stuart received one of the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science in October 2011—the Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year.

PHOTO 1: THE MURCHISON WIDEFIELD ARRAY IS A TELESCOPE WITH NO MOVING PARTS. CREDIT: DAVID HERNE, ICRAR.

PHOTO 2: A HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE IMAGE OF SOME OF THE EARLIEST GALAXIES THAT MAY HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR ‘LIGHTING UP’ THE COSMOS. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, R. WINDHORST (ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY) AND H. YAN (SPITZER SCIENCE CENTER, CALTECH).

International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Perth
Professor Steven Tingay, Tel: +61 (8) 9266 3516, steven.tingay@icrar.org, mwatelescope.org

School of Physics, University of Melbourne
Professor Stuart Wyithe, Tel: +61 (3) 8344 5083, swyithe@unimelb.edu.au, physics.unimelb.edu.au

The world’s largest telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), is expected to generate more data in a single day than the world does in a year at present. And even its prototype, CSIRO’s ASKAP, is expected to accumulate more information within six hours of being switched on than all previous radio telescopes combined.

Such gargantuan streams of data require serious management, and that will be one of the jobs of the $80 million iVEC Pawsey Centre in Perth, which is due to be completed in 2013.

The planned Pawsey High-Performance Computing Centre for SKA Science in Perth (photo credit: Woodhead/CSIRO)

“There are two issues here,” says Andrew Rohl, Executive Director of iVEC, a joint venture between the CSIRO and the four public West Australian universities, which will manage and operate the facility. “The raw data is being generated by telescopes out in the desert, and we have to get it to a computer to reduce that data and to generate useful products out of it. So the first problem is to get it to Perth, and the second is to process that amazing quantity of information.”

Solving that first problem means mastering high-speed data transfer. “The only way to transmit quickly the huge amount of data that would be generated by the SKA telescope is by high speed networks,” says Chris Phillips, who works on the problem at CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science. “We’re talking terabits per second.” Transferring one terabit a second is the equivalent to transferring 50 full DVDs every second. “Over the last few years we have had to develop custom software to efficiently utilise high-speed networks because standard software just couldn’t cope.”

Black holes in real time

In a test of their technology, two Australian radio telescopes worked with others in China and Japan to observe a distant black hole. Connecting the telescopes electronically using high-speed data transfer allowed astronomers to collaborate in real-time, rather than waiting months for the data to be stored on disks and then shipped around the world. “That demonstration showed the world that Australia can be the data processing centre for these international experiments,” Chris says. In the next two years they plan to increase data transfer rates tenfold.

Once the data has been collected, it has to be processed. Powering the high-performance computers needed to process that data avalanche will take a lot of energy. The Pawsey Centre will need the power supply of a large shopping centre. “A lot of that energy will be turned into heat,” says Andrew.

However, at least part of the energy needed to keep the computers cool will come from a renewable source—geothermal energy. In June 2010, the Government announced a $47.3 million green energy investment in the SKA project, to build a geothermal cooling plant for the Pawsey Centre and to build a solar array at MRO to power the observatory itself.

The Centre, which will be equipped with one of the 20 most powerful supercomputers in the world, will cut its teeth on data processing for ASKAP and MWA telescopes.

PHOTO: THE PLANNED PAWSEY HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING CENTRE FOR SKA SCIENCE IN PERTH (CREDIT: WOODHEAD/CSIRO)

iVEC Professor Andrew Rohl, Tel: +61 (8) 6436 8831, ed@ivec.org, ivec.org

CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, Dr Chris Phillips, Tel: +61 (2) 9372 4608, Chris.Phillips@csiro.au

‘THE DISH’ AT PARKES. CREDIT: SETH SHOSTAK

The energy of ultra-high energy (UHE) cosmic rays that strike the Earth’s atmosphere make the energy produced from particle collisions by the Large Hadron Collider look puny. A team based in South Australia is now developing the techniques and technology to find out where such energetic particles could possibly originate. They ultimately hope to use the proposed SKA telescope to conduct their search.

“We think some cosmic rays are produced in the remnants of supernovae—exploding stars—but where the most energetic ones come from, that’s a mystery,” says Justin Bray, a PhD student hunting for their source as part of the LUNASKA (Lunar Ultra-high-energy Neutrino Astrophysics using SKA) project led by Ray Protheroe at the University of Adelaide and Ron Ekers at CSIRO.

The trouble is that cosmic rays are charged, so their trajectories are bent by magnetic fields, making it impossible to track their specific origin. However, theory predicts that whatever is producing the rays should also produce UHE neutrinos. “Neutrinos are uncharged and travel in straight lines, so if we are able to detect them then we might be able to detect the sources of cosmic rays,” says Ray.

Although UHE neutrinos can’t be detected directly, they should be detectable indirectly. As they strike the Moon, theory predicts that they should produce a particle cascade and a tell-tale radio pulse, as long as astronomers keep looking for long enough. The more sensitive the telescope, the more of these pulses should be detectable, and so the shorter the wait to catch one.

A CSIRO-led team is currently developing the necessary signal processing hardware using the dish at Parkes, Australia’s biggest current radio telescope. In addition, the team is developing technology needed to detect the pulses with the proposed SKA, the opening of which will mark the start of another phase of the UHE neutrino hunt. “If we don’t spot a neutrino with the dish at Parkes, we’ll have the technique worked out so that we can use the SKA when it’s ready,” says Justin.

PHOTO: ‘THE DISH’ AT PARKES. CREDIT: SETH SHOSTAK

School of Chemistry and Physics, University of Adelaide
Associate Professor Ray Protheroe, Tel: +61 (8) 8303 4748, raymond.protheroe@adelaide.edu.au, http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/astrophysics/lunaska/index.html

CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science
Professor Ron Ekers, Tel: +61 (2) 9372 4600, Ron.Ekers@csiro.au

THE FIRST ASKAP DISH BEING ERECTED IN FEBRUARY 2010. CREDIT: DAVE DEBOER, CSIRO

It’s not due to begin operating until 2013, but astronomers from around the world are already lining up to use CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). In fact, the first five years of ASKAP’s operation are already booked out, with ten major international Survey Science projects looking for pulsars, measuring cosmic magnetic fields, studying millions of galaxies, and more.

ASKAP might be a demonstrator project for the much larger SKA, but it will also be a cutting-edge telescope in its own right. The 36-dish ASKAP features a new ‘focal plane array’ technology that gives it a huge 30° field of view. “So instead of concentrating on one small patch, we can cover the whole sky in a fairly short space of time,” says Simon Johnston, ASKAP project scientist.

A large dynamic range—the difference between the strongest and weakest signals picked up—is another advantage. “We’re aiming to get a dynamic range 10 to 100 times better than CSIRO’s current flagship telescope, the Compact Array,” says Simon.

“It’s important to stress the international nature of the science that will be done on ASKAP,” says Phil Diamond, Director of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science. “That’s a big thing for us, because the SKA is an international project. We want to ensure that ASKAP is international in scope, not just Australian only.”

Mapping magnetism reveals cosmic history

BRYAN GAENSLER IS SURVEYING THE UNIVERSE’S MAGNETIC FIELDS. CREDIT: THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY.

One international team waiting to use ASKAP is planning the largest-ever survey of magnetic fields in the Universe—revealing new details of cosmic history.

“Magnetic fields are important because they basically tell gas in the Universe how to move,” says Bryan Gaensler, an astrophysicist at The University of Sydney. “And because gas is the ingredient that makes galaxies, stars and planets, it’s vital we know magnetism’s influence if we’re to understand how the Universe has evolved.”

Magnetic fields in distant space can’t be measured directly. Astronomers have to rely on the effect magnetism has on the polarisation of electromagnetic waves (such as radio waves and light waves) reaching their telescopes.

Bryan heads the team that will use CSIRO’s ASKAP to conduct the survey, which is called POSSUM—the POlarisation Sky Survey of the Universe’s Magnetism. ASKAP will be the ideal facility when it comes online in 2013.

“Previous studies covered either a big part of the sky but not to a great depth in space, or probed to a great depth but only over a small area. POSSUM will go both wide and deep,” says Bryan. “We’ll improve on the current best survey by a factor of 100.”

Studying the effects of cosmic magnetism, however, is only one part of the challenge. Astronomers still don’t have a full understanding of where all the magnetism came from in the first place. Bryan hopes POSSUM will help to answer that question too.

PHOTO 1: THE FIRST ASKAP DISH BEING ERECTED IN FEBRUARY 2010. CREDIT: DAVE DEBOER, CSIRO

PHOTO 2: BRYAN GAENSLER IS SURVEYING THE UNIVERSE’S MAGNETIC FIELDS. CREDIT: THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY.

CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science
Dr Simon Johnston, Tel: +61 (2) 9372 4573, Simon.Johnston@csiro.au, www.atnf.csiro.au/projects/askap/index.html

Sydney Institute for Astronomy, University of Sydney
Professor Bryan Gaensler, Tel: +61 (2) 9351 6053, bryan.gaensler@sydney.edu.au, askap.org/possum

CSIRO's Parkes telescope records pulsar signals to try to detect gravitational waves. Credit: David McClenaghan / CSIRO

Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts them, and they could be scattered throughout the Universe. But so far, gravitational waves— ‘ripples’ in the fabric of space and time—have never been detected. Several Australian teams of astronomers are trying to catch the first signs of one.

Using CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope, some of these astronomers are hunting gravitational waves by studying signals coming from pulsars— the collapsed cores of exploded stars. Spinning at up to hundreds of times per second, pulsars emit highly regular radio pulses that appear to flash on and off like a lighthouse. And that’s the key to detection.

“If a gravitational wave sweeps through Earth, the pulsar signals detected at our telescope will arrive later or earlier than we would expect them,” says George Hobbs of the CSIRO’s Astronomy and Space Science, and a member of the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array project. Gravitational waves could come from pairs of black holes circling each other. Others could be lingering from a time shortly after the Big Bang.

“Parkes’ ability to see the southern sky is ideal for this project and may lead to the first detection of gravitational waves,” says George. “And when the Square Kilometre Array is built, it will be the perfect telescope for studying the waves in detail.”

The hunt for invisible ripples

Meanwhile, at the Australian International Gravitational Research Centre at Gingin in Western Australia, 65 kilometres north of Perth, David Blair from the University of Western Australia and his team have been exploring techniques of using lasers to detect gravitational waves directly .

Gingin is also the favoured site for one of the most sensitive machines searching for gravitational waves, a Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detector. Two of these detectors have already been established in the US. Late in 2010, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) offered to provide Australia with its own $140-million LIGO machine—as long as Australia can find a further $140 million to build a facility to house it.

Locating a LIGO detector in the Southern Hemisphere would allow the origin of any gravitational waves to be pinpointed much more accurately. Other types of telescopes could then be trained on the spot, enabling different sorts of observations to be made efficiently.

It would also bring huge advantages to Australia, says Jesper Munch of the University of Adelaide, chair of a consortium of five universities set up to advance the proposal. “LIGO-Australia would put this country at the forefront of the relevant technology.”

In fact, Australian technology is already contributing to the LIGO project. The US LIGO detectors are being upgraded to be ten times more sensitive, and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Wave Astronomy is part of that effort. Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, and at Adelaide University, are in the middle of a four-year project to produce optical components that will stabilise the LIGO laser system.

“Einstein predicted them, but thought we’d never be able to detect them,” says David McClelland, Director of the ANU’s Centre for Gravitational Physics. “Now, we’re on the cusp of the first direct observation of gravitational waves.”

CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science
Dr George Hobbs, Tel: +61 (2) 9372 4652, George.Hobbs@csiro.au, www.atnf.csiro.au/people/George.Hobbs

ANU Centre for Gravitational Physics, Canberra
Professor David McClelland, Tel: +61 (2) 6125 9888, David.McClelland@anu.edu.au, www.anu.edu.au/physics/cgp/index.html

MATTHEW BAILES IN THE SWINBURNE VIRTUAL REALITY THEATRE IN FRONT OF AN IMAGE OF THE DOUBLE PULSAR DISCOVERED WITH CSIRO’S PARKES RADIO TELESCOPE. CREDIT: SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY.

The technology used in your PC or PlayStation is also helping drive a revolution in radio astronomy—the replacement of custom-built hardware with flexible software and data solutions.

“Hardware solutions for radio astronomy have been evolving, but computer power has been evolving much faster,” says Matthew Bailes, from the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. The Centre has developed software systems that are now used in Australia and overseas.

The rapid advance of computer processing power and network speeds have been a boon for the High Time Resolution Universe Survey, headed by Matthew, which uses CSIRO’s Parkes telescope to scan the sky for fast-occurring, short duration radio signals.

“Ten years ago, it was impossible to get anything more than a few megabytes per second of data reliably into a computer for processing—now we get gigabytes per second,” says Matthew. “We’ve taken 250 terabytes in the last year alone, compared to only ten terabytes over seven years for the previous survey.”

Swinburne’s latest frontier is supercomputers that use graphics processors developed for PCs and games consoles. These graphics chips can handle far more data than normal processors for a fraction of the price of custom-built hardware. And they’ll be needed, since “in terms of information capture, the amount of astronomy done in the next three years will equal all the astronomy done in the previous history of mankind,” Matthew explains.

PHOTO: MATTHEW BAILES IN THE SWINBURNE VIRTUAL REALITY THEATRE IN FRONT OF AN IMAGE OF THE DOUBLE PULSAR DISCOVERED WITH CSIRO’S PARKES RADIO TELESCOPE. CREDIT: SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY.

Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Melbourne
Professor Matthew Bailes, Tel: +61 (3) 9214 8782, mbailes@swin.edu.au, astronomy.swin.edu.au

A DEPICTION OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF MATTER IN AN OBJECT NEARLY TEN MILLION LIGHT YEARS ACROSS AND A THOUSAND TIMES THE MASS OF THE MILKY WAY. THOUSANDS OF THESE EXIST IN THE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE. CREDIT: GREG POOLE, SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY.

Over aeons of time cosmic gas comes together, stars begin to form, supernovae explode, galaxies collide. And computational astronomers can watch it all unfold inside a supercomputer. That’s the kind of work post-doctoral fellows Rob Crain and Greg Poole are doing at the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing.

In late 2010, one of Crain’s simulations of galaxy formation appeared on the cover of the prestigious weekly British science journal, Nature. And Poole’s simulations of the evolution of the structure of the Universe have earned him a place in an international research team undertaking the largest project in the history of the Hubble Space Telescope—the CANDELS survey to investigate galaxy evolution across 12 billion years of cosmic time.

“The supercomputer is the astronomer’s laboratory,” says Darren Croton, also from Swinburne and chair of the Australian National Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. “We use them to apply our knowledge of the Universe and build models of how we think the details work. Then we can test our models with observations.

“Supercomputing technology has really marched forward recently. And that means that theoretical astrophysics has taken off. Simulations can be used to predict where to point our billion-dollar telescopes for maximum scientific return, so we don’t waste observing time. Theorists have become valuable members of large observing teams, and help guide them and interpret their results.”

Australia’s forté in the field, says Croton, is tracking cosmic gas. The big new Australian telescopes like SkyMapper and the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP, see Australia’s SKA demonstrator already booked out) will give us an unprecedented view of how stars and gas in galaxies behave, he says. “Stars form where the gas is, so it’s hard to fully understand the process of star formation at a galactic level until you understand the gas processes. I think this is a real niche area which plays to the strengths of Square Kilometre Array (see Big science tackles the big questions) and ASKAP.”

PHOTO: A DEPICTION OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF MATTER IN AN OBJECT NEARLY TEN MILLION LIGHT YEARS ACROSS AND A THOUSAND TIMES THE MASS OF THE MILKY WAY. THOUSANDS OF THESE EXIST IN THE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE. CREDIT: GREG POOLE, SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY.

Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing
Dr Darren Croton, Tel: +61 (3) 9214 5537, dcroton@swin.edu.au, astronomy.swin.edu.au/~dcroton/

THE MASSIVE DENSE CLOUD OF HYDROGEN (SHOWN BY THE RED CONTOURS), CALLED BYF73, APPEARS TO BE COLLAPSING IN ON ITSELF DUE TO GRAVITY, FORMING HUGE PROTOSTARS (SEEN AS RED)

Enormous collapsing clouds of cosmic gas and dust may yield clues on how massive stars form, which is an enduring mystery of astronomy.

One such cloud, called BYF73, has been studied by a research team using CSIRO’s Mopra radio telescope. Peter Barnes, an Australian researcher working at the University of Florida in the US, leads the team. The massive hydrogen cloud is collapsing in on itself and will probably form a huge cluster of young stars.

Observations of clouds like BYF73 allow astronomers to test theories of massive star formation in great detail. Astronomers already have a good grasp of how stars such as our Sun develop from clouds of gas and dust. But for heavier stars—more than ten times the mass of the Sun—they are largely in the dark, despite years of work.

“Massive stars are rare and they will only form when large clouds of gas collapse,” Peter explains. “Most are well over 1,000 light years away, making them hard to observe.”

Follow-up observations made with the Anglo-Australian Telescope showed signs of massive young stars that have already formed at the centre of the BYF73 gas clump.

PHOTO: THE MASSIVE DENSE CLOUD OF HYDROGEN (SHOWN BY THE RED CONTOURS), CALLED BYF73, APPEARS TO BE COLLAPSING IN ON ITSELF DUE TO GRAVITY, FORMING HUGE PROTOSTARS (SEEN AS RED)

Astronomy Department, University of Florida, USA Dr Peter Barnes, Tel: +1 352 392 2052 x283, peterb@astro.ufl.edu, www.astro.ufl.edu/~peterb

PARTICLES EMITTING RADIO WAVES STREAM MILLIONS OF LIGHT-YEARS INTO SPACE FROM THE HEART OF THE GALAXY CENTAURUS A. CREDIT: ILANA FEAIN, TIM CORNWELL & RON EKERS (CSIRO). ATCA NORTHERN MIDDLE LOBE POINTING COURTESY R. MORGANTI (ASTRON), PARKES DATA COURTESY N. JUNKES (MPIFR).

At the centre of a nearby galaxy lurks an object of huge interest, a super-massive black hole. CSIRO scientists have used their radio telescopes to take a picture of the galaxy surrounding it, a task some thought could not be done, because of the sheer size and radio brightness of the scene. The image of Centaurus A took about 1,200 hours of observations and a further 10,000 hours of computer processing to put together, but the work is already beginning to bear fruit.

“We didn’t generate this image just to make a pretty picture,” says lead scientist Ilana Feain of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science. “We want to understand in detail how the energy from super-massive black holes influences the formation and evolution of their host galaxies.”

At a mere 12 million or so light-years away, Centaurus A is by far the closest galaxy to our own to contain an active super-massive black hole; it is about 50 million times the mass of the Sun. The galaxy was first recorded at Parramatta, Australia’s first major observatory, and its long history and close proximity have made it a popular subject of study—so much so that it has become something of a model system for studying galaxies. In 2009 an international conference in Sydney was devoted solely to Centaurus A—during which the new image was unveiled.

“The image shows powerful radio emissions billowing out from just around the black hole. These radio jets extend millions of light years away from the black hole itself, beyond the visible galaxy into the comparatively empty intergalactic medium,” says Ilana.

The picture of Centaurus A was constructed from a mosaic of observations taken by CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array and the Parkes radio telescope.

“This image shows how the jets interact with the interstellar and intergalactic medium. When we combine this information with observations from other telescopes that operate across the electromagnetic spectrum from the infrared through the optical to high energy gamma rays, we can start to piece together the physics of the history of these galaxies.”

PHOTO: PARTICLES EMITTING RADIO WAVES STREAM MILLIONS OF LIGHT-YEARS INTO SPACE FROM THE HEART OF THE GALAXY CENTAURUS A. CREDIT: ILANA FEAIN, TIM CORNWELL & RON EKERS (CSIRO). ATCA NORTHERN MIDDLE LOBE POINTING COURTESY R. MORGANTI (ASTRON), PARKES DATA COURTESY N. JUNKES (MPIFR).

CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science
Dr Ilana Feain, Tel: +61 (2) 9372 4268, ilana.feain@csiro.au, atnf.csiro.au