A new multi-wavelength analysis of 620 galaxies attempts to disentangle physical phenomena contributing to the galaxies brightness in radio waves. To properly understand the evolution of galaxies since the first galaxies I the early universe, we need to observe galaxies in different wavelengths, including visible light (optical), infrared, x-ray and radio. Each window of light “sees” different contributions to the … Read More
An SAAO Special Edition of NRF Science Matters Magazine Vol 3 Issue 3 was released by the National Research Foundation. This special edition of Science Matters focuses on the facilities, infrastructure and research themes through which South Africa punches well above its weight in the global Astronomy endeavour. The National Research Foundation hosts a variety of world-leading telescopes such as … Read More
In our continuing Science Engagement And Development Seminar series, we are excited to welcome Prof. Jean Greyling from Computing Sciences at Nelson Mandela University. He comes to tell us about his TANKS application and project. Touching the code – expanding learners’ career horizons. Abstract Software Development has been identified as one of the scarcest skills in South Africa (and most … Read More
The IDIA) Office of Development and Outreach located in the UWC’s Physics and Astronomy department is often running research and development projects for which we would like to employ students as research assistants through work-study. Loading…
As the scale of data and complexity of processing capabilities needed for scientific research grow, cloud computing is becoming the go-to technology to be able to handle the data and deploy scientific software pipelines. Research is also a global enterprise with large projects accumulating tens, sometimes hundreds of collaborators worldwide. It is therefore natural to seek to integrate the large … Read More
In the early universe, most matter as we know it was in the form of neutral hydrogen. Some of it is still lying around and is often seen because it absorbs light from galaxies further away, and obstructs our seeing. Neutral hydrogen was almost evenly distributed, but small differences in density were present. Mapping this neutral hydrogen, we are able … Read More
A hackathon is a fun, fast-paced, strenuous, yet highly rewarding event where developers/coders, designers, strategists, and enthusiasts come together to work on project ideas and build solutions. Hackathons are known for late-night coding in groups, with shared pizzas and screens – but not in these times of pandemic. This time, we do it remotely. This hackathon is co-hosted by the University … Read More
The Cube Analysis and Rendering Tool for Astronomy (CARTA) is a new image visualization and analysis tool designed for ALMA, the VLA and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) pathfinder telescopes. CARTA is developed by a consortium of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA), the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA), the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and the Department of Physics, University of Alberta. The CARTA development team is … Read More
An initiative by Dr. Ryan Daniels at the Forensic DNA laboratory in the Department of Biotechnology at the University of the Western Cape, this month-long workshop takes the participants from the basics of using Unix, the most common computer platform for science, to characterising ancestry with DNA data using cloud computing platforms and software containerisation. The diversity of topics of … Read More
The IDIA Pipelines team is pleased to announce V1.1 of the IDIA Pipeline. The package uses CASA/MPICASA to do the initial cross-calibration (1GC, a’priori) of MeerKAT data on the ilifu SLURM Cluster. This release implements the concurrent cross-calibration of spectral windows on the ilifu cluster and includes several tweaks to improve performance and stability. This release brings several scientific improvements … Read More
