University of Tasmania, Australia

GASKAP – The Galactic Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder Survey

ASKAP is a powerful new radio telescope under construction in Western Australia by the CSIRO-ATNF (the Australia Telescope National Facility). The University of Tasmania is coordinating one of the key science projects that will be done with ASKAP. This is a survey of the Milky Way Galaxy disk and halo, and the Magellanic Clouds, using the 21-cm line of atomic hydrogen and the 18-cm lines of the OH molecule in the interstellar medium. The survey involves a team of some 80 scientists from around the world, but the UTAS group is leading the effort. As the new telescope comes on-line in the next two years, there will be important jobs to do for a PhD student. In this project, one or more students will work with scientists at UTAS, at the ATNF, in Western Australia, and in other countries to develop tools to get the data, to store, check, and calibrate it, and then to interpret the data astrophysically. The goal of this research is to understand how the Milky Way evolves due to accretion of gas, loss of gas, star formation, and chemical enrichment through stellar winds and supernova remnants.