Birth of a spider army: The next generation of radio telescopes and their unique view of the sky

Cleo Loi is a member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics and recently graduated with a B.Sc. (Adv) from the University of Sydney. She is the lead author on a research paper reporting the existence of tubular plasma structures in the inner magnetosphere of the Earth, an observation made possible by the recent advent of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a forerunner to the Square Kilometre Array. Based on radically new design concepts, the MWA is one of the first of the new generation of radio telescopes and promises to revolutionise our understanding of both the cosmos and our home planet.