NZ set to join space probe

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

A Hamilton telescope built for $15,000 in 1982 is set to take part in an international experiment aimed at probing the earliest years of the universe.

Radio astronomers at Auckland University and at Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology hope to use Hamilton's tiny 10m dish to extend the range of much bigger radio telescopes such as the 64m dish at Parkes in New South Wales.

Swinburne astrophysicist Dr Steven Tingay said in Auckland last week that linking the Australian telescopes with even a small telescope in New Zealand could provide an extra "fix" on a star or a black hole.

"The resolution of your network is driven by the maximum distance between any two antennas," he said.

Adding New Zealand into the Australian network would boost Australia's bid to host a US$1 billion to $2 billion ($1.5 billion-$3 billion) international project to build about 300 antennas spread over 3000 sq km with a combined collecting area of 1 sq km - 100 to 1000 times more powerful than the biggest existing radio telescope.

The leading candidates for the central site are Western Australia and South Africa. The site is due to be chosen in 2006.

Dr Tingay said the project would probe stars and black holes that are so far away that the radio waves that reach Earth from them must have originated in the epoch of "cosmic renaissance", when the first stars formed out of dark clouds of dust.

Scientists believe that the universe began in a "big bang" about 13.7 billion years ago, but quickly cooled into a "dark age" when matter and energy were scattered uniformly.

It gradually burst into light again when energy and matter became concentrated in the first stars several hundred million years later.

Although some images of this time have been obtained recently from the Hubble space telescope, Dr Tingay said much more detail would become visible through the planned radio telescope network by 2010-2012.

He said Hamilton's 10m dish would be enough to prove the idea of incorporating New Zealand into the network, but in the longer term a dish at least 20m wide would be needed.

A former chief technical officer in Waikato University's physics department, Robin Holdsworth, said Hamilton's dish was "an amazing co-operation between the university, the [Waikato] Polytechnic and the Ministry of Works".

The ministry designed it. The polytechnic found the steel and bent it to shape. Mr Holdsworth talked the Navy into letting him take a Bofors gun mount from the Devonport naval base as a stand for the telescope.

Auckland University physics professor Geoff Austin said he would seek university funding to upgrade the telescope for the initial test with Australia.

Beyond that, the university hopes that it may get access to one of several dishes that have been built in New Zealand for satellite telephone communication.

TelstraClear spokesman Ralph Little said his company had just decommissioned a satellite dish at Auckland's Carlaw Park.

He said the company would prefer to lease the facility and was talking to "several other parties".

Telecom spokesman Phil Love said his company's three dishes at Warkworth were all operating actively, but two other dishes at Wellington and at Rangiora near Christchurch were not as active.

"Telecom is always interested in talking to people who are interested in using these types of operations."