Belinda Smith

But the other big telescope we've heard a lot about is the Square Kilometre Array.

Can that not help support local astronomy?

What would full membership to the European Southern Observatory cost?

Has the door shut to the European Southern Observatory?

Is there a plan B?

Professor Fred Watson.

Now, something that comes up time and again in these conversations is how the fancy new tech that goes into telescope instruments can be spun off into everyday life.

To find out more about this, I spoke to Professor Richard McDermid, an astrophysicist also at Macquarie University.

Sounds like ESO's got a lot to gain from Mavis' installation.

When will it be popped on the telescope?

I mean, I'm sure it's a little bit more, you know, technical than that, but when will it be installed?

Australia won't be a member of ESO.

Well, highly unlikely given the government's recent announcement.

Does it affect the development of Mavis and what does it mean for you and your team?

Just to clarify, those 200 nights, it would just be using the telescope that Mavis would be on, it's not the other three, or the extremely large telescope when it comes online?

So something that you hear a lot about the benefits of things like astronomy and how they can benefit people who aren't astronomers or astrophysicists is when people design and build instruments...

such as Mavis, for instance, you get these spin-off technologies that do become ubiquitous in like our phones or whatever it is.

With Mavis, I don't know, maybe it's too soon to say, or maybe you can't say it all, but are there potential little spin-offs like that that have come off of Mavis or could potentially come off of the development of that instrument?

Professor Richard McDermid at Macquarie University.

And we'll have Federal Minister for Science Tim Ayres on the program next week to discuss this decision to not pursue full ESO membership and talk about the future of Australian research.