AuScope VLBI project

About the project

The AuScope VLBI project is a research collaboration between the University of Tasmania and Geoscience Australia.

It covers Australia’s contribution to the international network of geodetic radio observatories for the International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry (IVS) and the Asia-Oceania VLBI group for Geodesy and Astrometry (AOV), an essential piece in the Global Geodesy Supply Chain.

Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) is a space-geodetic technique. Radio telescopes use signals from extra galactic black holes as anchors, providing the most stable refence available in the Universe. This information is subsequently used to measure global distances to the level of a few millimetres, to precisely determine how fast the Earth rotates and to support precise orbit determination for satellite navigation and remote sensing missions.

In collaboration with Geoscience Australia and AuScope, the University of Tasmania's geodetic VLBI research group created a VLBI explainer, an accessible, visual guide to help everyone understand how it works. Discover why modern society relies on VLBI observations, learn about the distant radio sources that anchor our celestial reference frame, explore the immense data volumes generated by VLBI experiments and see how Australia plays a vital role in global VLBI operations.

Contact us Discover VLBI Auscope VLBI Operations Wiki

Observatories

Our observatories are located at three sites across the Australian continent: at the Mt Pleasant Radio Observatory in Hobart, Tasmania; at Australia’s “Geodetic Supersite” Yarragadee in Western Australia and in Katherine at the Charles Darwin University campus in the Northern Territory. We have three identical 12m class telescopes. Initially, they were observing in the S/X legacy VLBI mode and over the past years they have been upgraded to VGOS capability.