Our facilities and partners

Macquarie University is a financial member of the Australian consortium of universities supporting the operation of the national largest optical telescope – the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) at Siding Spring Observatory.

Our researchers enjoy proprietary access to the AAT and its suite of instruments – many of which were built by the AAO instrument team.

Designed to take images of extremely faint astronomical objects in the Southern sky, the Huntsman Telescope is made up from an array of commercial Canon telephoto lenses. It allows us to explore galaxy evolution, exo-planets and more.

The Huntsman Telescope is located at the Siding Spring Observatory, in the heart of the Warrumbungle National Park – an internationally accredited Dark Sky Park.

Our research centre has access to a comprehensively equipped on-campus observatory, used for:

• research
• teaching (as part of our long-running undergraduate degree program)
• public outreach (run by our student-led astronomy society – the Association for Astronomy).

Our facilities include a 0.6m PlaneWave robotic telescope which can feed our high-resolution echelle spectrograph, which was designed and built in-house.

Our researchers have access to various on-premises computer facilities, including the data and computer resources of the Research Data Services team at AAO.

In addition, we have institutional access to national supercomputers, including:

• GADI (4000+ node supercomputer)
• Nirin (cloud hosted virtual machines) through the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) partner scheme.

Our centre researchers frequently access time on the world’s largest telescopes through competitively awarded time allocations.

These facilities include:

• the European Southern Observatory (ESO) through the current Australian Strategic Partnership
• Gemini Observatory
• ALMA
• ATNF
• VLA.

Our centre hosts two major nationally-funded facilities with precision engineering and manufacturing capabilities:

• Australian Astronomical Optics (AAO)
• the headquarters of the OptoFab Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF).

Our centre works closely with the Macquarie University Data Horizons Research Centre, with several members in common.

Data Horizons is developing new methods in data science and enabling new research in a range of challenging application domains, such as business forecasting and sustainable investment, predictive and personal health, archaeology, and astrophysics.

Macquarie University offers joint studentships with CSIRO Space and Astronomy (S&A), which operates Australia’s world-class national radio astronomical observatories.

Students work with scientific supervisors at both CSIRO and Macquarie through the S&A graduate student program.

Contact joanne.dawson@mq.edu.au or read more about:

• CSIRO Space and Astronomy
• graduate student program
• how to arrange a project.

Our centre hosts the Australian Astronomical Optics (AAO) group – a highly skilled team of researchers, engineers and software developers with decades of experience in designing and delivering novel instrumentation for the world’s most advanced observatories.

AAO are also a major node of the NCRIS-funded Astralis Instrumentation Consortium – Australia’s national capability in optical instrumentation.

Projects include major instruments for:

• Gemini Observatory
• the European Southern Observatory
• the Giant Magellan Telescope.

We also have emerging capabilities in space-based payloads for astronomy and other space-based research.

Our centre hosts the Macquarie node ASTRO 3D – a seven-year, $40 million Centre of Excellence project funded by the Australian Government, through the Australian Research Council.

ASTRO 3D connects us with more than 250 world-leading astronomers to understand the evolution of galaxies, matter, light and the elements, from the Big Bang to the present day.

ASTRO 3D combines innovative optical and radio technology with new theoretical supercomputer simulations on a massive scale, requiring new big data techniques.

We have several members from the Data Central team – a group of specialised software developers hosted within AAO.

Data Central:

• supports data archives for major national and international astronomical surveys
• develops data pipelines and analysis platforms for complex instrument suites at major astronomical observatories.

Recent clients include the European Southern Observatory.

Data Central also hosts a node of the NCRIS-funded Astronomy Data and Compute Services (ADACS), providing merit-allocated software development effort to astronomical research projects.

Walanga Muru means ‘follow your path’ in the language of the Dharug People, on whose land Macquarie University’s Wallumattagal campus resides.

The staff at Walanga Muru believe that the success of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students is achieved through a holistic approach that recognises cultural differences, and values diversity of cultural backgrounds and experiences of those students accessing higher education.

These values strongly align with those of our research centre, and we are proud to work with the team at Walanga Muru to nurture the close connections of our research to Sky Country and Australia’s first astronomers.

Our research centre has a growing number of industry and government organisations who have partnered with us in previous and ongoing projects. These include:

• Gilmour Space Technologies
• Advanced Navigation
• NH Micro.