By Chris Lewis for ABC News<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nWhen stars die, they leave behind glowing clouds of gas and energy.
\nPhoto: Supplied: Silvia Mantovanini & the GLEAM -X team\n<\/p>\n
A new view of the Milky Way has been revealed by capturing different radio frequencies, showing where stars are born and where they are dying – details not normally visible to the naked eye or through astrophotography.<\/p>\n
The GLEAM survey, short for Galactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA, is a radio astronomy project that mapped the entire sky visible from Western Australia using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope.<\/p>\n
The survey looked at radio waves from space to study galaxies, stars, supernova remnants, and other cosmic objects that cannot be seen with regular telescopes.<\/p>\n
Silvia Mantovanini is a PhD student at Curtin University’s International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research.<\/p>\n
She spent 18 months and more than 40,000 hours using supercomputers at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre to process data from the GLEAM survey and create the image.<\/p>\n
“It’s 20 mosaics, with slightly different frequencies overlaid one on top of the other,” Mantovanini said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a different way of looking at the Milky Way compared to what we see by eye.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nThe Milky Way over the Church Of Good Shepherd in Tekapo.
\nPhoto: 123RF\n<\/p>\n
Mantovanini said they gave off special radio signals made by charged particles moving around magnetic fields.<\/p>\n
“The blue areas show places where new stars are being born,” she said.<\/p>\n
The image is made by combining 20 different images taken at slightly different frequencies, revealing the final moments of old stars and the birth of new ones.<\/p>\n
Mantovanini said stars were dying and being born all the time.<\/p>\n
“We always have new stars that are merging with others or interacting with other objects in the sky, and then slowly they go to die,” she said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nThe GLEAM and GLEAM-X radio images (top) compared with a view of the Milky Way from the Southern Hemisphere.
\nPhoto: Supplied: Axel Mellinger\/Silvia Mantovanini & the GLEAM -X team\n<\/p>\n
A reflection of the past<\/p>\n
Mantovanini said the image was a reflection of the past from a long time ago.<\/p>\n
“Because light takes time to travel through space, everything we see in the sky shows us the past,” she said.<\/p>\n
“So when we look at stars or galaxies, we’re actually looking back in time, seeing how things once were, not how they are today.<\/p>\n
“Even when you look up from your own backyard, you’re seeing into the past.”<\/p>\n
Mantovanini hoped people will find the data useful for prompting new discoveries and to help better understand what is happening within our galaxy.<\/p>\n
– ABC News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Chris Lewis for ABC News When stars die, they leave behind glowing clouds of gas and energy.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,147,392],"class_list":["post-128908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}