Observations of the southern sky started in February 1997, and were completed in March 2000, consisting of 23,020 eight-degree scans of each of 9 minutes duration.
Archival data from HIPASS and the HI Zone of Avoidance (HIZOA) survey were reprocessed to make a new 20cm confusion-limited continuum map of the sky south of declination +25°.
[6] The instrument consists of a focal-plane array of 13 individual receivers arranged in a hexagonal pattern.
[6] Built in a collaboration between numerous institutions, it was funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) to undertake the HIPASS and ZOA surveys.
The existence of the Leading Arm is predicted by models of a tidal interaction between the Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way.