Astronomy Infrastructure Portfolio

AAL receives funding from the Australian Commonwealth Government to support Australian-based astronomers to access a range of world-class national and international astronomical facilities and to support various development projects to upgrade or develop future national and international astronomical infrastructure.

Optical

Giant Magellan Telescope
Credit: GMTO Corperation
The GMT is a next generation optical/infra-red telescope. At 25 metres in diameter, it will have over six times the collecting area of the largest telescopes currently in existence.
Strategic ESO Partnership
Credit: ESO
The Australian Government has committed $26.1 million to enable Australia to enter an agreement with ESO from 2018 to maintain Australia's optical astronomical research.
ITSO
Credit: AAO ITSO Office
The International Telescopes Support Office (ITSO) provides support and training to astronomers to maximise access to, and science output from, large overseas optical telescopes.
Magellan Telescopes
Click to read more on the Magellan website.
The Carnegie Institution for Science operates the 6.5-metre Baade and Clay telescopes in Chile. AAL secured access to 15 nights/year on these telescopes to the end of 2020.
Subaru Telescope
Credit: Subaru Telescope, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan manages the 8.2-metre Subaru telescope located in Hawaii. AAL has secured 10 nights for Australian Astronomers during 2018.
Gemini Telescopes
Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA
The International Gemini Partnership manages the two 8-metre Gemini telescopes located in Chile and Hawaii. AAL provides 7 nights/year access until 31 December 2017.
HERMES
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The High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph (HERMES) is a new instrument on the Anglo-Australian Telescope now being used by the GALAH team.
2dF fibre upgrade
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The HERMES and AAOmega spectrographs on the Anglo-Australian Telescope are fed by the 2-Degree-Field (2dF) fibre, which was recently upgraded to improve performance.
PLATeau Observatory
Click to read more on the PLATO website.
The three PLATOs are robotic astronomical observatories for Antarctica that support scientific instruments for astronomy and atmospheric site testing on Dome A, Ridge A and Dome F.

eResearch

ADACS
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Astronomy Data and Computing Services (ADACS) aims to assist astronomers in maximizing the scientific return from data and computing infrastructure, through training, support and expertise.
All Sky Virtual Observatory
Click to read more on the ASVO website.
ASVO is part of AAL's longer-term vision to develop a Federation of National Astronomy Datasets, in which a central facility will house an infrastructure development and research support team.
Green II Supercomputing
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The GPU supercomputer Green II comprising gSTAR and swinSTAR, has up to 1,700 kSUs available to Australian astronomers through the Astronomy Supercomputer Time Allocation Committee.

Radio

Australian SKA Pathfinder
Credit: Alex Cherney
ASKAP is a world-class radio telescope being constructed by CSIRO in outback Western Australia as a powerful survey instrument and test-bed for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).
Murchison Widefield Array
Credit: Curtin University/MWA Collaboration
MWA is a radically new type of radio telescope, with no moving parts, and dependent on prodigious computer power to create exquisite real-time wide-field images of the radio sky.

Multi-Messenger

Cherenkov Telescope Array
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CTA is a $200M-Euro project to build the next generation ground-based very high energy gamma-ray instrument. It aims to investigate cosmic rays, black holes and the nature of matter.
Pierre Auger Observatory
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The Pierre Auger Observatory, located in Argentina, is devoted to the study of ultra-high energy cosmic rays with water tanks fitted with 1600 detectors that detect Cherenkov light.