Silvia Mantovanini, a PhD student at Curtin University’s International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, has dedicated 18 months to a groundbreaking project that unveils the life cycle of stars within the Milky Way. At the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, she unlocked the potential of cutting-edge supercomputers. With them, she crunched over 40,000 hours of data to create a detailed radio map of the galaxy. This stunning new photo, an artistic composite of 20 different photos shot with varying frame rates, provides brilliant fresh perspectives on the birth and death of stars.
Mantovanini’s artistic practice is inspired by GLEAM-X radio images, which were taken on the new Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope. She’s combined these works of art to form a bold split-screen visual that reflects both. This is the radio view of the Milky Way next to its more familiar visual counterpart. Her goal is to offer researchers a tool that will facilitate further discoveries and enhance understanding of the galaxy’s dynamic processes.
The Life Cycle of Stars
Arguing for a more dynamic and constant portrayal of evolution, Mantovanini illustrates how the processes of stellar evolution are ongoing. “We always have new stars that are merging with others or interacting with other objects in the sky, and then slowly they go to die,” she explains, highlighting the perpetual cycle of creation and destruction in our universe.
This radio map is impressive in its beauty. It serves not only as a remarkable scientific resource, but as a guide to inspire new questions about how stars are born and live their lives. The blue areas in her imagery are among the most well-documented known areas of star formation. They feature the stellar nurseries that are bubbling with activity, all around our galaxy.
Insights from Time and Space
Mantovanini additionally meditates on the existential weight of cosmological observation. “Because light takes time to travel through space, everything we see in the sky shows us the past,” she states. This idea goes a long way in conveying the fact that the audience is seeing astronomical phenomena as they were years or decades or even centuries ago.
After all, any time we look at stars or galaxies, we’re looking back in time. What we’re seeing is the way they used to be, not the way they are now. She adds. Perhaps this temporal point of view deepens the understanding of her results and deepens the awe of the immensity found in space.
Collaboration and Future Discoveries
The project was realized in cooperation with Axel Mellinger, who brought further expertise in imaging techniques to the endeavor. They produced the stunning image above that brilliantly dramatizes our view of the Milky Way. This beautiful rendering serves as an inspiration for the research to come with the cutting-edge radio astronomy.
Mantovanini said she hopes her research will encourage more computational linguists to engage with these questions. “I hope people will find the data useful for prompting new discoveries and to help better understand what is happening within our galaxy,” she remarked.
