Australian astronomers are hoping a new high-tech tool will help reveal the origins of the Milky Way.

They have built a one-of-a-kind, $13 million High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph known as HERMES.

It took Australian scientists five years to build and will enable them to map the age and movements of stars.

The robotics inside are state of the art and the Australian Astronomical Observatory's Dr Sarah Martell said it could capture images of up to 400 stars at once.

"Our goal in our survey is to look at a million stars and to do that one at a time would be wildly inappropriate," Dr Martell said.

"So the fact we can do 400 stars all at once allows us to speed it up - but it will still take us five years."

Stars chemically form in clusters from clouds of gas and dust, but each has its own kind of stellar DNA that is tracked in a technique known as galactic archaeology.

"The big picture goal of galactic archaeology is to understand how the galaxy got to be the way that it is today," Dr Martell said.

"So we're going to use this information we get about what the stars are all made out of to try to unfold the process of how did stars form."

The Anglo-Australian Telescope at the Australian Astronomical Observatory. ( ABC News: Jake Sturmer )

Dr Martell said the point of the project was about satisfying natural curiosity - and the potential was limitless.

"If you go outside and you look up at the sky you wonder 'Why is it like that? How did it get that way?'"

"One of the great things about astronomy is you don't have to just wonder, you can go out there and make measurements and see directly the development of great big scale things like galaxy formation."

The director of the Astronomy School at ANU, Professor Matthew Colless, said it was important for governments to take risks on funding projects such as HERMES.

"Now this sort of technical innovation is risky, it's hard to do," Professor Colless said.

"It is one of the benefits of working at a place like the Australian Astronomical Observatory that it is possible to get grants, to get funding from enlightened governments like the Australian Government to actually take those risks."

Overshadowing the Australian Astronomical Observatory's outstanding contribution to space research is the fear of looming budget cuts across the science community.

While Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane was happy to unveil the plaque, he was not giving much away about the budget.

"The key is to ensure that we have a stable budget that is in surplus so we then have the funds available to make future research projects," Mr Macfarlane said.