Downtown Rotarians with Dr. Sergei Gulyaev (Director of the IRASR) in front of 30m RadioTelescope
Twenty three of us braved the wind and rain on Saturday 24th Nov and made our way up to the Warkworth Radio Astronomical Observatory for an interesting tour of the 30meter RadioTelescope that is operated by Institute of Radio Astronomy & Space Research (IRASR) of Auckland University of Technology.
In 2010 Sergei & his team arranged to lease from Telecom (now Spark) their communications satellite dish for $1 and have transformed it into the largest RadioTelescope in Australasia. According to Sergei- “size matters” and the bigger the better in order to capture data from the farthest reaches of space. In addition to the sizeable dish, within the institute are supercomputers that constantly work to convert sound waves into computer data for processing and sharing with other astronomical research agencies around the world.
Later our group enjoyed a tasty meal at Sawmill Brewery in Leigh. Ah - food for the mind and body.