In this episode, we dive into how astronomers are combining the power of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory to capture the dynamic, ever-changing sky in real time.


Historically, optical and gravitational-wave observatories issued rapid alerts, but radio astronomy lacked automated, large-scale, real-time alert infrastructure. Now, a long-term monitoring program (project AS331) targets Rubin’s Deep Drilling Fields (DDFs), taking 3-hour radio snapshots approximately every 10 days to achieve a sensitivity of \\(\sim 60\ \mu\text{Jy}\\). This complementary survey automatically processes and streams radio data to the global astronomical community in near-real-time without human intervention.


Episode Highlights & Key Discoveries:

  • Bridging Optical and Radio Astronomy: How contemporaneous, non-coordinated radio surveys solve the bottleneck of follow-up observations for millions of optical alerts.
  • Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs): Updated high-cadence light curves for AT2018hyz, revealing late-time radio flaring and scintillation effects that constrain the outflow size.
  • Supernova Interaction: Modelling circumstellar material interactions around the Type IIb supernova SN2024abfo.
  • New Cosmic Discoveries: The detection of ASKAP J095711.5+051205 (a candidate optical-less TDE in a poststarburst galaxy) and ASKAP J005026.4-422958 (an ongoing Extreme Scattering Event caused by plasma lensing).


### Article Reference

Title: ASKAP Monitoring of the Rubin Deep Drilling Fields

Authors: Dougal Dobie, James Freeburn, Iris de Ruiter, Katie Auchettl, James Coulson, Brent Miszalski, Anais Möller, and Nikhil Sarin

Identifier: arXiv:2610.13011v1


Acknowledements: Podcast prepared with Google/Gemini Notebook. Illustration credits: CSIRO

Rss Apple Podcaster
Podden och tillhörande omslagsbild på den här sidan tillhör Astro-COLIBRI. Innehållet i podden är skapat av Astro-COLIBRI och inte av, eller tillsammans med, Poddtoppen.