South Okanagan observatory’s ‘DRAGONS’ map the magnetic structures of the Milky Way
Published 5:30 am Saturday, January 31, 2026
International scientists, the University of B.C. Okanagan and the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory at White Lake have produced a map of the Milky Way’s magnetic fields.
This research is part of a larger initiative called the Global Magneto-Ionic Medium Survey (GMIMS), with the data collected from the DRAO forming the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory GMIMS of the northern sky, or simply, DRAGONS.
Dr. Alex Hill, Assistant Professor in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science at UBCO, is a specialist in radio astronomy and worked on the team with former UBCO postdoctoral researcher Dr. Anna Ordog to capture radio emissions across a range of frequencies.
“For decades, we could only measure the Milky Way’s magnetic field in a very averaged, simplified way,” said Hill. “But its magnetic field is an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to understanding how the universe and everything in it operates and came into being.”
The global project was initiated by Dr. Tom Landecker, an astronomer at DRAO and adjunct professor at both UBCO and the University of Calgary.
“DRAGONS is like a compass, telling us how matter and magnetic fields in the galaxy are organized and how the magnetic field interacts with bubbles created by supernova explosions, spiral arms and other parts of the galaxy in ways that have never been possible before,” said Landecker.
The data was collected through the DRAO’s 15-metre radio telescope, and was turned into a map of magnetic structures in the Milky Way that were previously invisible and only existed in theory until modern telescopes were developed.
The project was the first scientific use of the 15m telescope, which DRAO originally built as a prototype antenna for the SKA—a large radio telescope currently under construction in Southern Africa and Western Australia. Ordog led the setup for the DRAGONS project, supported by five students from UBCO and the University of Calgary, along with the expertise of DRAO engineers and technologists.
“The 15m is the ideal instrument for this all-sky survey of large-scale magnetized structures—it can scan rapidly, effectively ‘painting’ a map of the polarized sky in just six months,” Ordog said. “Having the 15m so close to UBCO allowed students to contribute to hands-on testing in preparation for the survey.”
The study, recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, tracks how polarized radio waves twist as they travel through the galaxy, revealing the strength, structure and direction of magnetic fields along the line of sight. This survey shows that more than half the sky contains complex magnetic structures rather than simple, uniform fields.
Already, the DRAGONS data have been used in a study of the mysterious large-scale reversal in the galactic magnetic field, as University of Calgary doctoral student Rebecca Booth recently published work in an accompanying paper in the Astrophysical Journal based on the dataset.
“DRAGONS is part of a new generation of radio surveys that allow scientists to map the Milky Way’s three-dimensional magnetic field structure in the space between the stars,” Ordog said. “It is an important Canadian contribution to the global astronomical community.”
