The next wave of asteroseismic discovery using NASA’s TESS mission. This project aims to make advances in astrophysics by capitalising on NASA’s upcoming Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission and recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Through an innovative approach to analyse big datasets, the project expects to generate new knowledge in the key areas of planet formation, stellar structure, and the Galaxy’s evolution. Outcomes include strong international links to leadin ....The next wave of asteroseismic discovery using NASA’s TESS mission. This project aims to make advances in astrophysics by capitalising on NASA’s upcoming Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission and recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Through an innovative approach to analyse big datasets, the project expects to generate new knowledge in the key areas of planet formation, stellar structure, and the Galaxy’s evolution. Outcomes include strong international links to leading institutions and enhanced capacity for Australia to be part of cutting-edge space exploration. The methods and skills developed by the project should provide significant benefits to other data-driven sciences and help build smarter business models and improved decision making in industry and government in our increasingly data-dependent economy.Read moreRead less
The pathway to planets: formation of protoplanetary discs. This project aims to expand our knowledge of how planetary systems are born. Observations are bringing new insight into the structure of discs of dusty gas orbiting young stars, but not in sufficient detail to understand how planets form within them. This project aims to link the structure of discs to the well-characterised interstellar cloud cores that collapse to form star-disc systems. The project aspires to use innovative techniques ....The pathway to planets: formation of protoplanetary discs. This project aims to expand our knowledge of how planetary systems are born. Observations are bringing new insight into the structure of discs of dusty gas orbiting young stars, but not in sufficient detail to understand how planets form within them. This project aims to link the structure of discs to the well-characterised interstellar cloud cores that collapse to form star-disc systems. The project aspires to use innovative techniques to enable the rapid collapse calculations needed to map core properties to disc structure. Expected outcomes include knowledge of the disc structures critical to interpreting observations of forming planetary systems. The benefit will be guidance to the theory needed to explain the incredible variety of planetary systems we see today.Read moreRead less
Wobbling stars reveal their hidden companions. This project aims to measure the wobble in the position of distant stars that is caused by massive objects, using telescopes in space. This project expects to generate new knowledge on how binary stars, exoplanets, and stellar mass black holes are formed. Expected outcomes of this project include tight constraints on binary star models, new discoveries of neutron stars and black holes that are a few times more massive than the Sun, and samples of st ....Wobbling stars reveal their hidden companions. This project aims to measure the wobble in the position of distant stars that is caused by massive objects, using telescopes in space. This project expects to generate new knowledge on how binary stars, exoplanets, and stellar mass black holes are formed. Expected outcomes of this project include tight constraints on binary star models, new discoveries of neutron stars and black holes that are a few times more massive than the Sun, and samples of stars that do, and do not, host exoplanets. This should provide significant benefits including a catalogue of companion properties for billions of sources, new understanding of how stars die, as well as the first control sample of stars without planets to help understand how and why planets form.Read moreRead less
Equipping VIKiNG: mid-infrared technology for exoplanet characterisation. This project aims to develop thermal infrared technologies for the Very large telescope interferometer Infrared Kernel-NullinG instrument (VIKiNG), making it the most capable direct exoplanet detection instrument on any existing, or under construction, facility. Australia is currently world leading in innovative photonics technologies, and these are currently the limiting factor in producing a manufacturable design for VIK ....Equipping VIKiNG: mid-infrared technology for exoplanet characterisation. This project aims to develop thermal infrared technologies for the Very large telescope interferometer Infrared Kernel-NullinG instrument (VIKiNG), making it the most capable direct exoplanet detection instrument on any existing, or under construction, facility. Australia is currently world leading in innovative photonics technologies, and these are currently the limiting factor in producing a manufacturable design for VIKiNG. This project provides a clear pathway for laboratory development of high-efficiency, active mid-infrared photonic circuits in the thermal infrared. Beyond benefits to astronomy, these circuits are the first step in developing remote molecule detectors for environmental monitoring and security.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE180100165
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$792,859.00
Summary
Veloce Verde+Azzuro - Tripling the Power of Australia's Planet Foundry. This project aims to better understand humanity’s place in the Universe, including questions such as whether we are alone or if our home in the Solar System is unique or common. This project will enable new observations using a revolutionary Australian facility, Veloce Verde+Azzuro. Moving beyond discovering habitable planets around dim red stars, it will enable science on the properties and system architectures of planets o ....Veloce Verde+Azzuro - Tripling the Power of Australia's Planet Foundry. This project aims to better understand humanity’s place in the Universe, including questions such as whether we are alone or if our home in the Solar System is unique or common. This project will enable new observations using a revolutionary Australian facility, Veloce Verde+Azzuro. Moving beyond discovering habitable planets around dim red stars, it will enable science on the properties and system architectures of planets orbiting stars like the Sun. It will deliver a ten-fold increase in collecting power for Sun-like stars, providing understanding of how exoplanetary systems, and our Solar System, were formed.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE210100953
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$405,000.00
Summary
Directly imaging exoplanets with astrophotonic innovation. Understanding our place in the universe and the possibility of life are profound questions. This project aims to develop innovative astro-photonic technologies to enable imaging of Earth-like planets beyond our solar system, and to perform unprecedented observations. The project expects to generate new knowledge and innovation in exoplanet science and photonics. Expected outcomes include the first glimpse of the most Earth-like planet to ....Directly imaging exoplanets with astrophotonic innovation. Understanding our place in the universe and the possibility of life are profound questions. This project aims to develop innovative astro-photonic technologies to enable imaging of Earth-like planets beyond our solar system, and to perform unprecedented observations. The project expects to generate new knowledge and innovation in exoplanet science and photonics. Expected outcomes include the first glimpse of the most Earth-like planet to date, and the development of ground-breaking technology. Benefits include technological innovation — benefiting fields such as remote-sensing, space-communications, life-science imaging, as well as astronomy — and revealing key insights into our planet’s history and the potential for life in the universe.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE210101738
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$345,000.00
Summary
Discovering the most extreme pulsars with the next generation radio surveys. Finding radio pulsars has always been an extremely rewarding challenge and has led to Nobel Prize winning science. We are now entering a new era of radio astronomy and have new game changers, sensitive, wide-field-of-view imaging telescopes and massive compute resources, to search for extreme pulsars. Such pulsars, including pulsar-blackhole systems and sub-millisecond pulsars, cannot be found with traditional pulsar su ....Discovering the most extreme pulsars with the next generation radio surveys. Finding radio pulsars has always been an extremely rewarding challenge and has led to Nobel Prize winning science. We are now entering a new era of radio astronomy and have new game changers, sensitive, wide-field-of-view imaging telescopes and massive compute resources, to search for extreme pulsars. Such pulsars, including pulsar-blackhole systems and sub-millisecond pulsars, cannot be found with traditional pulsar surveys, but provide us unique laboratories to test gravity theories at ultra-strong gravitational fields and probe the state of matter at supra-nuclear densities. In this project I will leverage the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) to discover the most extreme pulsars in deep all-sky continuum surveys.Read moreRead less
The diversity of core-collapse supernovae. This project aims to develop a comprehensive picture of the explosions of massive stars as core-collapse supernovae using high-end computer simulations. Such explosions come in many varieties and arise from different classes of progenitor stars. This project seeks to thoroughly understand this diversity. It endeavours to provide simulations of supernovae powered by magnetic fields, supernovae that produce black holes, supernovae in binary systems, and t ....The diversity of core-collapse supernovae. This project aims to develop a comprehensive picture of the explosions of massive stars as core-collapse supernovae using high-end computer simulations. Such explosions come in many varieties and arise from different classes of progenitor stars. This project seeks to thoroughly understand this diversity. It endeavours to provide simulations of supernovae powered by magnetic fields, supernovae that produce black holes, supernovae in binary systems, and the most energetic neutrino-driven supernovae. The project also aspires to better link numerical simulations, observations of supernovae and their remnants, and the nucleosynthesis fingerprints that supernovae have left in the chemical history record of galaxies.Read moreRead less
Formation and evolution of planetary systems. This project aims to develop computer simulation methods and mathematical modelling to help solve the mystery of how planets form. The project should also produce world-first algorithms for combining the effects of radiation and hydrodynamics, which will have a wide application in astronomy, atmospheric science and engineering and constraints on the processes of planet formation. The anticipated outcome of the project is to pinpoint the regions where ....Formation and evolution of planetary systems. This project aims to develop computer simulation methods and mathematical modelling to help solve the mystery of how planets form. The project should also produce world-first algorithms for combining the effects of radiation and hydrodynamics, which will have a wide application in astronomy, atmospheric science and engineering and constraints on the processes of planet formation. The anticipated outcome of the project is to pinpoint the regions where the dust grains grow to form the building blocks of planets.Read moreRead less