PositioNZ GPS Site at New Radio Telescope
By Christmas, LINZ will have established a Global Positioning System (GPS) site at the location of New Zealand’s first radio telescope, as part of the PositioNZ network. This will allow measurements from the radio telescope network to connect with the global GPS network.
The new $1 million radio telescope was opened by the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) on 8 October 2008. It is located in a radio-quiet valley near Warkworth, north of Auckland. The opening was a significant step for New Zealand geodesy as well as the astronomical sciences.
Tracking the Movements of the Earth
Data from the radio telescope can be used in conjunction with data from radio telescopes in other countries, such as Australia, to measure the distances between each telescope to within a few millimetres. This is important for establishing an accurate global spatial framework that can in turn be used by other technologies.
LINZ’s Team Leader Specialist Processing, Graeme Blick, is enthusiastic about the benefits to geodesy the radio telescope will bring.
“The telescope is very important in relation to global geodesy,” says Graeme. “Combining data from the telescope with that of PositioNZ will enhance the precision of global reference frames upon which we rely for the definition of our national datum. It will also establish a stable global reference frame from which changes to things such as sea level and tectonic plates can be measured.”
Tuning in to the Past
The major advantage of radio telescopes is that they can penetrate dust clouds in outer space that otherwise obscure views of important astronomical objects, such as the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
New Zealand’s chances of co-hosting with Australia the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be increased by having AUT’s radio telescope. The SKA is one of the largest scientific projects at present and will be built either in Australia or South Africa, where the view of our galaxy is best and radio interference is least.
The SKA seeks to combine the power of thousands of radio telescopes spread over 3000 km. This would enable scientists to “hear” radiation sources originating as far back as 13 billion years ago, around the time the univierse was created.
Find out more about geodesy and GPS in New Zealand.
