Jandanga 2023 AusSRC update
The Australian SKA Regional Centre (AusSRC) has been ramping up its international connections, with a focus on collaboration and learning across cultures, disciplines, and even oceans.
In late April, Karen made a reciprocal visit the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC) to connect with those who will be building up the Canadian SKA Regional Centre (SRC), some of whom visited Australia earlier in the year. Australia and Canada have already been working together to facilitate science from ASKAP and other SKA precursors in the Murchison. This visit provided the opportunity to further share notes on how to build up SRC functionality.
Discussions and ideas continued to flow during the ‘New eyes on the Universe: SKA & ngVLA’ conference in Vancouver. These telescopes (ngVLA is “Next Generation Very Large Array”, another array-style telescope such as the SKA and ASKAP) will re-define astronomy and are very challenging projects requiring significant amounts of collaboration and knowledge sharing. Karen, fully capitalising on the opportunity to showcase the work of the AusSRC with a poster and a 1-min talk, delivered an on-stage performance in rhyming couplets, which was awarded the “best poster flash” of the conference.
Visitors from the China SRC, along with Sudeschen Chetty (SKA-Mid) and the AusSRC team tour the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre. Credit: AusSRC
During recent months, connections with China (also a member of the SKAO) continue to strengthen. We had visitors from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) and the China SRC node. Along with Sudeshen Chetty, who was visiting from the SKA-Mid project in South Africa, the group toured the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre and discussed how observations from the SKA-Low at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory will be processed at Pawsey before being shared with astronomers around the world through the SRC Network.
The Australia-China Consortium for Astrophysical Research (ACAMAR) 9 meeting was held in Perth in late July/early August. Preceded by the MWA Project Meeting, celebrating 10 years of MWA operations, at Curtin as well as the ACAMAR: gas in galaxies workshop at UWA, there was ample international participation. Now, with fresh ideas and even stronger foundations for science collaboration, we hope to continue with the forwards momentum as we build, develop, and grow the SRC Network.
Kate Holmes, Administrative Assistant, AusSRC