Network-Enabled Radio Astronomy Wins First Internet2 Wave of the Future IDEA Award

ARLINGTON, Va., April 23 /PRNewswire/ -- This week at its Spring Member Meeting, Internet2 together with Level 3 Communications announced that the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) is the winner of the first Internet2 IDEA Wave of the Future Award for its recognized leadership in the development and use of a powerful, network-enabled electronic Very Long Baseline Interferometry (e-VLBI) application. E-VLBI allows "rapid response" science, providing the astronomers the ability to react reliably and quickly to unexpected astronomical events such as supernovae explosions.

The Internet2 Driving Exemplary Applications (IDEA) Awards seek to recognize innovators who are developing and deploying advanced applications that are enabling revolutionary progress in research, teaching and learning. For the first time this year, the Wave of the Future category highlights applications that specifically require or make use of a dedicated optical circuit technology.

"Though we have made enormous progress since our first e-VLBI tests in 2006, we had not yet been able to just set up an experiment and press the 'GO' button. This dedicated circuit will let us explore ways to overcome these challenges and move forward with more aggressive e-VLBI experimentation. More than that, what we discover about overcoming high data throughput roadblocks can be applied to applications in other scientific disciplines," said Dr. Shaun Amy, data transmission specialist for CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility.

The team will receive a dedicated, 10 Gigabit per second optical circuit from Internet2 WaveCo, sponsored by Level 3 Communications, to enable CSIRO's ATNF to connect its three observatories to other radio telescope observatories in the United States and abroad. CSIRO ATNF and Internet2 will work with AARNet, the organization, which provides high-capacity leading-edge Internet services for the Australian research communities, and other members of the Internet2 community to implement the circuit.

"We are pleased to extend the first Wave of the Future award to our colleagues at the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility who are pioneering, with their peers around the world, the use of advanced optical networking to support breakthroughs in radio astronomy," said Jack Suess, CIO of University of Maryland, Baltimore County and vice-chair of the Internet2 Applications, Middleware & Services Advisory Council (AMSAC). "By providing this circuit for this innovative application, we hope to support greater global collaboration and investments in radio astronomy research, and encourage innovative thinking about how new optical networking technology enables science and education."

e-VLBI, an application that was recognized by the first IDEA award in 2006, is a technique by which remotely located, geographically distributed radio telescopes observe the same region of sky simultaneously. Data from each telescope are sampled and sent to a central processor via high-speed networks operating in real-time. The central data processor, decodes, aligns and correlates the data and generates very high resolution images of the cosmic radio sources observed. E-VLBI eliminates the shipping of disks and provides astronomers with near real time results, allowing them to exploit transient astronomical events.

The CSIRO ATNF works closely with other institutions in Europe, Asia, and the United States, such as the MIT Haystack Observatory.

"Our colleagues with CSIRO ATNF have been very aggressive in implementing and exercising e-VLBI in collaboration with other observatories around the world and well deserve the IDEA Wave of the Future award. The added capabilities made possible by the Wave of the Future award will help move e-VLBI from a labor-intensive experimental procedure to a global operational reality that promises to open new and expanded science windows in the study of astronomical objects and events," said Alan Whitney, director, MIT Haystack Observatory.

In addition, the CSIRO ATNF team plans to use the network capabilities provided by the Wave of the Future award to develop and better define the network and host requirements to support this type of global science and then make this information available to the research and education community to enable fellow scientists to concentrate more resources on their research rather than the network infrastructure.

"Level 3 congratulates the CSIRO ATNF team and is pleased to provide the 10 Gbps dedicated optical circuit to support and enable their award-winning project," said Jack Waters, president of global network services for Level 3. "We're proud to be associated with this project and believe it has great potential to positively affect advanced networking in the research and education community."

Awards will be presented at Internet2's 2008 Spring Member Meeting held in Arlington, Virginia on April 22, 2008 by Jack Suess and Randy Brogle, senior director for Level 3's research and education segment. Additional information about the IDEA Awards can be found at: http://www.internet2.edu/idea/

To view the netcast of the awards presentation, see: http://events.internet2.edu/2008/spring- mm/sessionDetails.cfm?session=3810&event=280 (Due to length of URL, please copy and paste into browser.)

About Internet2(R)

Internet2 is the foremost U.S. advanced networking consortium. Led by the research and education community since 1996, Internet2 promotes the missions of its members by providing both leading-edge network capabilities and unique partnership opportunities that together facilitate the development, deployment and use of revolutionary Internet technologies. Internet2 brings the U.S. research and academic community together with technology leaders from industry, government and the international community to undertake collaborative efforts that have a fundamental impact on tomorrow's Internet. For more information: http://www.internet2.edu