Australia is well placed to play a major role in, and reap the benefits of, this investment in a highly technological science, he says. Gone are the days when astronomers sat frozen to the eyepieces of their telescopes. The finding changes astronomers' views of how clusters and individual galaxies evolve.
Space is big.
Until now there has been only weak evidence that clusters might collide. If it is a black hole then this will be the first pulsar - black hole binary system found, and a superb natural laboratory for testing general relativity. Installed and tested last week, it makes the radio telescope the first millimetre-wave 'interferometer' in the Southern Hemisphere and the first anywhere with this technology. Astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere have a ringside seat looking straight into the centre of our own Galaxy and at the two nearest galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds. The film highlights the Australian contribution to the Apollo 11 mission and pays tribute to Australian engineers and scientists.