European radio astronomers now have access to real-time images of the Southern Hemisphere sky, thanks to the EXpress Production Realtime eVLBI Service (EXPReS) project.
The project, which involves the CSIRO's Australian Telescope National Facility, JiVE in the Netherlands and AARNet, recently allowed astronomers from Australia and Europe to observe Supernova SN1987a, the light from which first reached Earth in 1987.
Tasso Tzioumis, CSIRO research scientist, said, "The supernova exploded 20 years ago in the Magellanic clouds, which are 167,000 light years away. This is the first time we have been able to image this supernova in radio waves at such high resolution and sensitivity."
The Supernova 1987A operation ran for 12 hours between midnight October 7 and midday October 8, and provided high-resolution images to scientists on both continents for the construction of detailed imaging of the event.
Telescopes at Parkes, Narrabri and Coonabarabran in NSW transported data at 512 Mb per second in real time to JiVE's super computer using three AARNet lightpaths. The JiVE correlator combined the signal from the three Australian telescopes to create an image of the supernova.
AARNet CEO Chris Hancock said, "This is a first for Europe and Australia in being able to demonstrate a high-speed international connection that allows true observations and analysis over an extended period of time. This demonstrates the true power of the internet for science and research."
