News & Events
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News: Dr Emma Ryan-Weber is one of 2009's Fresh Scientists
News: Swinburne Astronomer elected to Australian Academy of Science
News: Astronomers discover galactic 'missing link
News Archive
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21 June 2009
News: Dr Emma Ryan-Weber is one of 2009's Fresh ScientistsDr Emma Ryan-Weber is one of this year's Fresh Scientists. Fresh Science is a national competition that identifies new and interesting research being done by early-career scientists around the country and releases their stories to the media. Emma and her colleagues have discovered the oldest and most distant carbon in the Universe, but there's not enough of it to support standard theories of how the Universe lit up.
Full story on the Fresh Science and Swinburne Media Releases websites.
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27 March 2009
News: Swinburne astronomer elected to Australian Academy of ScienceProfessor Warrick Couch has been recognised for his contribution to the field of astrophysics, by election to the Australian Academy of Science. Couch, a distinguished professor at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, has been acknowledged for his work on galaxy evolution and cosmology, and his involvement in the discovery of the accelerating universe. Election to the Academy represents one if the highest honours that a scientist can be awarded in Australia. Each year the Academy elects 16 new fellows from a diverse range of sciences. Couch's election further cements his place as one of the country's most eminent scientists.
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23 March 2009
News: Astronomers discover galactic 'missing link'The discovery of a galactic freak - an extremely rare ultra-compact dwarf galaxy, the closest yet found to the Earth - could furnish the missing link in understanding how galaxies and their clusters evolve.
Swinburne University of Technology astronomer Dr. George Hau, along with Professor Duncan Forbes and his research group, made the discovery using the giant Keck telescope - the most powerful optical instrument in the world.
Full story: Swinburne Magazine, Issue #5
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15 March 2009
Study: May application round for PhD scholarshipsWe are now accepting Expressions of Interest for Swinburne's May application round of PhD scholarships. A range of scholarships are available to local and international students.
Click here for more information
Note that although the deadline for formal PhD scholarship applications is in late May, Expressions of Interest should be made as early as possible. After the Expression of Interest is assessed, students in contention for scholarships must discuss potential PhD projects with possible PhD supervisors, and forward certified documents by regular mail, to be received at Swinburne by the 22nd May.
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16 Feb 2009
Events: Swinburne Telescopes: Past, Present & FutureLittle is known about Robert Wigmore, the maker of a large reflector telescope once owned by Swinburne University. Built in 1894, and used for astronomy classes at Swinburne in the 1950s, the telescope disappeared in 1960. For over 40 years, its whereabouts remained a mystery. To celebrate the International Year of Astromy, the recently re-discovered Wigmore Telescope is returning to Swinburne University for one evening. For more information, including bookings for this event, see here.
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23 Jan 2009
News: Swinburne Science Production in RotterdamBigger than Big, a three-dimensional astronomical journey produced by Swinburne University was a proud invited participant in the 38th Rotterdam International Film Festival this week. The film was chosen as part of the "Signals: Size Matters" Program along with films from around the globe.
Bigger than Big was produced at the Swinburne's Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing and combines cutting edge scientific astronomical data and simulations with stunning animations.
From an astronaut's footprint to the galaxy clusters that form the most gigantic structures known, Bigger than Big is a captivating astronomy experience designed for science museums, observatories and planetariums. Data visualisations from galaxy surveys were used alongside realistic animations to create a beautiful and educational universe.
The Rotterdam Film Festival is an active supporter of independent film making from around the globe and offers a program of innovative, experimental cinema and film-related art.
"Being chosen for a festival like Rotterdam is a wonderful recognition of the work we do," says the film's Director, Russell Scott. "It shows the ability of innovative storytelling and animation to bring science into the world of art and vice versa. Supporting crossover scientific films like Bigger than Big is a really unique aspect of Swinburne's business."
Bigger than Big is currently showing in 3d-stereo at Swinburne Astrotour theatres in Sydney, Parkes, Hobart, and the United Kingdom, among others.
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12 Jan 2009
News: 2009 International Year of Astronomy lecture series.UNESCO has declared 2009 to be the "International Year of Astronomy" (IYA09). Here at the Centre for Astrophysics, we will be running a number of special events throughout the year, along with some old favourites. All events will be listed here: http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/outreach/
We are kicking things off with our summer public AstroTours. These 3D tours of the universe are guided by one of the Centre's astronomers and will also show a selection of our 3D films. More information is available on our AstroTour homepage: http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/astrotour The summer dates are 21 January at 3 pm, and 22 January at 7 pm, and the price is $10 per person. Bookings are essential and can be made by calling 9214 5569, or emailing contact@astro.swin.edu.au
The 2009 Public Lecture series will celebrate IYA09 with a focus on the research of the Centre's astronomers, and our distinguished visitors. The full lecture program can be found here: Free lecture series
The first Public Lecture will be on 19 February at 6:30 pm. Professor Matthew Bailes, the Centre's Director, will talk about his favourite pastime, Millisecond Pulsar Hunting. Bookings can be made as per above.
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Dec 2008
News: CAS reaffirmed as a Tier 1 Centre until 2015The Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing has had its Tier 1 status reaffirmed and will receive Tier 1 funding until the end of 2015.
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News: The opening of our new High-Definition Virtual-Reality Theatre
Our new High-Definition Virtual-Reality Theatre was opened by Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Swinburne's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ian Young on Monday 8th December with a short introduction from Centre Director Professor Matthew Bailes and a presentation from Dame Joceyln Bell Burnell.
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Study: Vacation scholarships: Applications for summer accepted
We are now accepting applications for Vacation Scholarships at the Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing from enthusiastic university students with excellent scholastic records who are in the last, or second last, year of their undergraduate degree.
For scholarships during the period December 2008 to February 2009, we ask for applications to be submitted by the 31st October 2008.
Click here for more information
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News: The Little Things are Coming! In High Definition!
Comets. Asteroids. Kuiper Belt Objects. The popular 3D stereo production by the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing has been re-designed and animated in full High Definition Stereo, especially for Swinburne Astrotour Theatres around the world. This is the story of the amazing little things in the Solar System, and the incredible space explorers that have visited them.
“Many of the stories about our Solar System concentrate on the Sun and the Planets, but the asteroids, comets and Kuiper belt objects have their own fascinating science to share,” Dr Chris Fluke, astronomer and original screenplay author, says. “By re-releasing this production in high definition, we can give people a more immersive experience and a better understanding of our Solar System.” The Little Things HD takes us from shooting stars on earth to the outer reaches of the Oort cloud, where comets are thought to form. We land on the surface of a comet and fly through the asteroid belt.
“The beauty of 3D stereoscopic animation is the educational impact it provides,” explains Dr Elizabeth Stark, Marketing and Business Manager for the Centre. “We are no longer limited to telling the audience facts about comets, for instance, we can now pick them up and put them on the surface of one. That kind of realistic experience is an extremely powerful education tool that just wasn't available ten or twenty years ago.” The Little Things HD will be released worldwide on the 29th of September, 2008, and will be screening as part of Swinburne University of Technology's Spring Holiday Astrotours.
For a full list of Astrotour theatres see http://www.vr.swin.edu.au/astrotour/installations.html. For sales and licencing information, please contact our distribution team at vr@swin.edu.au.
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Research: Measuring the Universe with a fine tooth comb
Images explaining the research
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Bigger than Big movie is finalist in 2008 Scinema Awards - 11th August 2008
Bigger than Big, a three dimensional astronomical journey produced by Swinburne University has been accepted as a finalist in the 2008 SCINEMA traveling festival of science.
The short animation will be touring Australia during National Science Week (August 16 - 24) as part of the "To the Moon and Back" SCINEMA program. SCINEMA is a science film, multimedia and video festival that works to combine the best of the arts and sciences to increase science literacy nationally.
From an astronaut's footprint to the galaxy clusters that form the most gigantic structures known, Bigger than Big is a captivating astronomy experience designed for science museums, observatories and planetariums. Data visualisations from galaxy surveys were used alongside realistic animations to create a beautiful and educational universe.
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Amateur astronomer stars for NASA
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Research: Earth’s laws still apply in the distant Universe
Images explaining the research
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Research: Einstein's theory still stands up to the stars
CAS Binary Pulsar Page with animation
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Research: Watching the Universe expand in real time
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Research: Strange stellar pair puzzles astronomers
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Research: The Universe is twice as bright as was previously thought
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News: Swinburne University joins the Association of Universities for
Research in Astronomy (AURA)
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News: Swinburne Astronomer wins Astronomical Society of the Pacific Prize
The "Nod and Shuffle" observational technique allows astronomers to obtain very faint spectra of celestial objects by naturally subtracting the glow of the nighttime sky. The technique has been used successfully in the study of faint galaxies with the Anglo-Australian Telescope, in the Gemini Deep Deep Survey of galaxies in the early universe, and in other applications.
Astronomy Society of the Pacific Press Release
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News: Bringing new life to online journals
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News: Royal Astronomical Society prize for Swinburne Astronomers
An Australian and UK astronomy team, including Professor Warrick Couch and Professor Karl Glazebrook of Swinburne, has been awarded the first
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News: Swinburne announces major new collaborative opportunity with Caltech: Swinburne Astronomers to access Keck telescopes
Swinburne's Vice-Chancellor and the Centre for Astronomy and Supercomputing's Director have signed an MOU with Caltech which will see extensive collaboration in radio and optical astronomy over the next 5 yrs. This will include access to the world's largest and most powerful optical telescope: the twin 10m telescopes of the W. M. Keck Observatory for up to 20 nights a year. The observatory is situated at 4205m above sea level (above 60% of the Earth's atmosphere) on the summit of Hawaii's dormant Mauna Kea volcano. Access to this class of telescope will enable Swinburne astronomers to see objects further away and with more detail than has previously been possible for Australian observers. Swinburne astronomers will be the first group in Australia to have guaranteed access to the Keck telescopes.
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News: Swinburne Astronomers win large Australia-India collaborative grant
The Swinburne astronomy team, led by Prof. Matthew Bailes and Dr. Ramesh Bhat, was successfully awarded a major research grant by DIISR to pursue an innovative scientific programme with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), the largest and most powerful low frequency radio telescope in the world. A joint collaborative effort between Swinburne, Curtin, Australia Telescope National Facility and the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (India), this programme will capitalise on the key infrastructure in India (the GMRT) and Australia (the Swinburne supercomputer) to develop and demonstrate important techniques (e.g. multi-beaming over wide field of view) relevant for the Square Kilometre Array project and use such newly developed capabilities of GMRT for novel science goals in the areas of pulsars and transients. Establishing an intercontinental interferometric link between Australia and India for Very Long Baseline Interferometry experiments is also among the main goals of the project.
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News: Royal Astronomical Society prize for Swinburne Astronomers
An Australian and UK astronomy team, including Professor Warrick Couch and Professor Karl Glazebrook of Swinburne, has been awarded the first Group Achievement Award from the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society. The award was made in recognition of their part in the 2-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS); measuring patterns in the distribution of galaxies on scales from 100 million to 1 billion light-years. Led by Professor Matthew Colless (Anglo-Australian Observatory) in Australia and Professor John Peacock (University of Edinburgh) in the UK, the thirty-three-member team spent ten years mapping the distribution in space of 220,000 galaxies using the 3.9-m Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) in New South Wales.
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Appointments: Dr Emma Ryan-Weber and Dr Darren Croton
We are pleased to announce that Dr Emma Ryan-Weber and Dr Darren Croton will join our academic staff in the near future. Dr Ryan-Weber is currently at the University of Cambridge and her areas of expertise include HI and high redshift extragalactic astronomy. Dr Darren Croton is currently at the University of California, Berkeley and is involved in the modelling of extragalactic surveys using cosmological N-body simulations and semi-analytical modelling.
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News: Adam Deller awarded prestigious Jansky Fellowship
Swinburne PhD student Adam Deller has been awarded the prestigious Jansky Fellowship from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) of the USA. Adam will be taking the first 1.5 years of this fellowship at NRAO itself, working on the software correlator required for the Long Baseline Array sensitivity upgrade; followed by 1.5 years at the University of California, Berkeley working with Professor Don Backer on the Portable Array to Probe the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER).
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Outreach: Dancing with the Stars: connecting astronomy and art
Dance and science come together when Swinburne's astronomy centre gains an artist in residence. Choreographer, Frances d'Ath, has been absorbed in the creative process for two months and is about to reveal monadologie the work choreographed during hher residency at Swinburne's Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. D'ath's Artist in Residence has been funded by the Australian Network for Art Technology/Arts Victoria.
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Research: Laws of Nature may be flawed after all
A Swinburne astrophysicist has leapt another hurdle in the path to proving that our fundamental theories of physics are not what they seem. Dr Michael Murphy is part of a team that has, over recent years, uncovered surprising and controversial evidence suggesting the laws of physics may have been changing through cosmic time. In this latest move, Murphy has debunked a study which claimed to disprove his findings.
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Research: Powerful Radio Burst Indicates New Astronomical Phenomenon
Astronomers at Swinburne University and West Virginia University (WVU) have identified a new mysterious burst of radio energy with the race now on to find more, paving the way for a new field of astronomy to emerge - similar to that achieved when the US military revealed the existence of gamma ray bursts in the 1970's.
Swinburne Media Release
NRAO Media Release
ABC News Coverage
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News: Two prestigious fellowships awarded to Centre staff
Two prestigious five-year research fellowships have been awarded to researchers at Swinburne's Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. Professor Warrick Couch, already a HiCi researcher, was awarded an Australian Professorial Fellowship (APF), while his colleague Dr Michael Murphy picked up a Queen Elizabeth II (QEII) Fellowship.
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Research: Fourteen new distant galaxies discovered - Galaxy 'hunting' made easy using the glare of cosmic flashlights
A Swinburne scientist is part of an international team of astronomers who have discovered over a dozen new galaxies halfway across the Universe. The discovery represents a major breakthrough in the field of distant galaxy 'hunting' and paves the way for more detailed studies of them.
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News: Prof. Warrick Couch receives prestigious international cosmology prize
Three Australian astrophysicists including Swinburne's Professor Warrick Couch are part of two international teams of scientists that will receive the prestigious 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize for their discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.
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News: Staff recognised as HiCi researchers
Professor Karl Glazebrook has recently been recognised as a HiCi (high citation) researcher, an honour awarded to researchers whose citations rank them in the top 0.5 per cent of researchers in their field globally. He is the second HiCi researcher at the Centre, alongside Professor Warrick Couch
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News: ARC Success for Swinburne Astronomers
Swinburne Astronomers Prof. Warrick Couch, Prof. Duncan Forbes, Prof. Karl Glazebrook and Dr Chris Blake have been successful in obtaining 3 competitive Discovery grants from the Australian Research Council. The awards, worth over $1M, will be used to conduct research in the areas of galaxy evolution and cosmology including measuring the dark energy content of the Universe.
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Media Release: Shedding light on Dark Energy
The largest ever galaxy survey to unveil nature 'fifth force'. Swinburne astrophysicists have been awarded a massive 220-night allocation from the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT), worth over $7 million, to study Dark Energy. The project will involve the largest-ever galaxy survey undertaken by the telescope and will measure some 300,000 distant galaxies.
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Appointments: Prof Karl Glazebrook
Later this year, Professor Karl Glazebrook will be joining Swinburne. Professor Glazebrook is presently a full professor at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. He has an outstanding track record with over 9000 citations of his work. Of his publications, 34 are ranked "high impact", meaning they are in the top 1% of the most highly cited publication in their year of publication. Clearly, with such an outstanding record, Professor Glazebrook will be a major addition to the University. Professor Glazebrook's outstanding abilities were recognised by the awarding of a 800K "blue sky" research grant from the Packard foundation, and he is leading some ambitious observational programmes at the world's largest telescopes into the nature of the distant Universe. Recognised as one of the world's leading observational cosmologists, Prof Glazebrook is currently helping to design the next generation of billion-dollar optical facilities.
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Media: 'Lost' Dark Matter Found
Using Gemini observations of globular clusters in NGC 3379 (M105), a team led by PhD student Michael Pierce and Prof. Duncan Forbes of Swinburne University in Australia, have found evidence for normal quantities of dark matter in the galaxy's dark halo. This is contrary to previous observations of planetary nebulae that indicated a paucity of dark matter in the galaxy.
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Appointments: Prof Warrick Couch
Professor Warrick Couch, Head of School of Physics at the University of NSW will be joining the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing from the middle of the year. Professor Couch is a high profile scientist, being a Citation Laureate, signifying that he is one of the 30 most highly cited scientists in Australia. Professor Couch in addition to the new Tier 1 appointments will greatly strengthen Swinburne's position as a leading centre for astronomy research.
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Astronomy behind the scenes: public lectures
From telescopes to supercomputers and 3D simulations of outer space, a new series of public lectures run by Swinburne’s Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing (CAS) will look at how changing technologies have shaped our understanding of the universe.
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New planetarium product transforms portable domes
Full colour animation taking stargazers anywhere in the Universe will be available to the portable planetarium market with the release of MirrorDome, a new digital product developed by the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing.
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Australia and New Zealand ready for next generation telescope
Radio astronomers in Australia and New Zealand have joined forces to link telescopes separated by over 2500km in preparation for the next generation of telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
The combined telescopes, located in the North Island of New Zealand and north-west New South Wales of Australia, have enabled astronomers to probe radio emission from a black hole, 4.5 billion light years distant from Earth. Astronomers were able to measure incredibly weak signals from a quasar (a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy, expelling material at close to the speed of light, 300,000 km per second) one quarter of the way across the universe (4.5 billion light years away), with a time accuracy of 5 billionth of a second (5 nanoseconds).
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Astronomers return to basics to measure the largest x-ray flare ever seen from the Sun
Using a simple radio receiver and antenna costing $155, Australian astronomers have trumped X-ray detectors on vastly expensive satellites orbiting Earth to accurately measure the largest X-ray flare ever seen from the Sun.
Solar flares are explosions in the Sun's atmosphere caused by the sudden release of magnetic energy, with the associated radiation and electrified gas having the potential to damage communications and other satellites in Earth's orbit and to disrupt power systems and radio communications on Earth.
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Swinburne team traces an invisible planet
Swinburne University astronomers are turning to computer screens - rather than towards the night sky - in their search for elusive new planets.
PhD student Adam Deller and Senior Lecturer Dr Sarah Maddison from the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing have been using the university's supercomputer to predict the presence of planets invisible from earth.
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