Fireball over Murchison Radio Telescope

A fireball (very bright meteor) streaks the sky above the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope antennas. The fireball left a glowing trail that dissipated over several minutes. Milky Way’s neighboring satellite galaxies and iconic elements of the southern sky, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, are also visible near the top in this south-looking image.

Emerging out of the Western Australian outback MWA is a remarkable telescope for radio astronomy where more than 2000 antennas are spread across 3 square kilometers, in 128 groups of dual-polarisation dipole antennas. Unlike steerable radio telescope dishes, these antennas contain no moving parts. Instead, advanced signal computer processing is used to focus the antennas on different parts of the sky. Murchison is over 800 km away from Perth, the capital of the Western Australia, and the vast area has very few population. Not only can extremely faint
cosmic radio wave be detected in this radio-silent area, but the night sky is also extremely dark, giving spectacular views of the cosmos.