The data will form the basis for decades of research into the origins and development of our galaxy, as well as providing a valuable training set for the next generation of huge artificial intelligence-driven astronomical surveys.
The dataset, the pinnacle of 10 years’ work, was gathered by astronomers from Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence in All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions – the ASTRO 3D team – using the Anglo-Australian Telescope near Coonabarabran in New South Wales, itself celebrating 50 years of operation this week.
One point oh eight million observations of 920,000 stars over 684 nights were made using an Australian instrument called the High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph, or HERMES, which is connected to the AAT.
