OK, so Australian astronomers like naming their projects after animals. As well as Taipan and Funnel-Web there’s Emu and Wallaby. Albatross was considered but voted down.
The Anglo-Australian Schmidt telescope is soon to begin (commissioning starting at the beginning of 2016) a giant survey (up tp 91% of the sky). Spectra of between 500,000 and 1 million galaxies in Taipan, and of an enormous number of stars in Funnel-Web. Key to this is a new optical-fibre positioning device called Starbug, that can set up a new set of up to 300 optical fibre positions for gathering spectra in one minute.
Aims include the most accurate measurement of the Hubble constant (more accurate than the Planck space telescope), measurement of how rapidly galaxies grow over long periods of time, a 3-D map of mass distributions and motions of galaxies in the nearby universe, “Identifying the mechanism that causes the cessation of star formation in galaxies, and moderates the transition from blue, active disk galaxies to red, passive spheroids.”
Amusingly, the telescope will carry out the Funnel-Web survey when it is light, because dark skies are needed for viewing spiral galaxies.
Links:
Biggest ever dark matter survey to begin in Australia
Taipan science poster
Taipan overview presentation
Funnel-Web home
and for fun, each Starbug is a miniature robot for positioning an optical fibre, and can actually be programmed to sing the Star Wars theme, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK9v130z4EE