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Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing

About Us


The Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing is part of the Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.

We are dedicated to inspiring a fascination in the Universe through research and education

Quick Facts
  • Established in 1998, we are Australia's newest and fastest growing astronomy centre
  • We are the largest astronomical research group in Victoria, and we are one of the largest in Australia
  • We have more than 20 (Ph.D. qualified) staff and nearly 20 students are undertaking a PhD degree in our vibrant Centre
  • We operate a significant supercomputing facility with a theoretical peak of 10.0 Tera FLOPS on which we conduct simulations ranging from stellar to cosmological scales
  • We house and operate a state of the art virtual reality theatre
  • The Centre has played a major part in constructing an innovative virtual reality environment - VROOM - currently housed at the Melbourne Museum
  • We have an active program of research and development in the planned Square Kilometre Array project
  • We regularly receive telescope time at major observatories including the Anglo-Australian Observatory, Parkes Observatory, Australia Telescope Compact Array, W.M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini Observatory
  • We are involved in an active Hubble Space Telescope Treasury Program
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    Research Interests
  • Astronomy Visualisation
  • Star & Planet Formation
  • Pulsars
  • Globular Clusters
  • Supermassive Black Holes
  • Galaxy Evolution
  • Big Bang Cosmology
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    Teaching

    Our online astronomy program, Swinburne Astronomy Online (SAO), concentrates on the fundamental concepts of and key issues in contemporary astronomy. It is designed for amateur astronomers, science educators and communicators, people working in astronomy related fields, and anyone with a love of astronomy and a need to understand more about what is being discovered in contemporary astronomical research.

    Public Outreach

    We are home to Cosmos, The Swinburne Astronomy Online Encyclopedia, a unique astronomy reference written by research astronomers for a general audience who wish to know detailed information on a wide range of astronomical topics.

    We are also the creators of AstroTour. These 3D 50 minute tours of the Universe are guided by professional astronomers and hosted for a variety of audiences.

    Our commercial arm, SpaceWorks, uses the synergy of astronomers, visualisation researchers, animators, artists and programmers to create new dimensions in astronomy and visualisation through our range of virtual reality projection and fulldome projection systems coupled with inspiring educational content.