The Australian scientists uncovering the origins of the Milky Way

CSIRO scientists have used a powerful radio telescope in Western Australia to map magnetic fields for clues to the galaxy's origins.

Scientists have created the most detailed map of the magnetic fields yet, providing more clues about the formation of galaxies. Source: AAP / Jon Gambrell / AP

In brief

• CSIRO scientists are helping map the origins of the Milky Way galaxy.
• The team uses a powerful radio telescope in remote Western Australia.

Iridescent red and blue ribbons of light arching over the Australian outback are helping scientists understand how the Milky Way galaxy came to be.

Using an advanced radio telescope in remote Western Australia, more than 700km north of Perth, astronomers have been able to visualise the galaxy's magnetic fields.

It is the most detailed map of the fields yet, providing more clues about the invisible forces that influence the formation of galaxies.

Astronomers from the CSIRO and SKA Observatory in the Murchison region looked for the way bright radio waves from distant galaxies changed as they came through the Milky Way's magnetic fields.

The changes are telltale signs of the magnetic fields' strength and direction.

"What we're doing here is looking for those compact, distant, far away galaxies and building up an atlas of those telltale signs," CSIRO research scientist Tim Galvin told the Australian Associated Press.

Information from the telescope, which can generate data at the rate of 100 trillion bits per second, or more data at a faster rate than Australia's entire internet traffic, helped researchers generate the visual map.

The red markings represent the parts of the field pointing towards earth, while blue shows the opposite.

More than 1500 observations were made in more than 1400 unique fields, according to a paper published in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.

A similar map was compiled by researchers in the northern hemisphere 17 years ago, but it could not capture all of the Milky Way because the best view is from the southern hemisphere.

Combining data from the older map and the new, more detailed version would be highly valuable, Galvin said.

"Magnetic fields are a pretty fundamental force and galaxy formation is a pretty big deal because the universe has evolved in a very particular way to get us to where we are now," he said.

"So understanding how these magnetic fields affect galaxy formation is a pretty important question."

Research scientist Stefan Duchesne said the data was public and available for anyone to use.

"There's a lot of archival data available now for people to go away and do their own science," Duchesne told AAP.

"Science is innovation ... so it's great that we preserve it and make it available."

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