The discovery of a rare type of spinning white dwarf star in a binary star system – only the second one known – provides a new understanding of the role of magnetic fields in stellar evolution.

The 19th biennial International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems (ICALEPCS) 2023 will be held from Monday, 9 October to Friday, 13 October 2023.

Funded by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (SARAO) Human Capital Development Programme, the workshop was held in collaboration with the Breakthrough Listen initiative, the MeerTime collaboration, the TRAPUM collaboration, the Transient Array Radio Telescope consortium and the Centre for Radio Astronomy Techniques and Technologies (RATT) in the Department of Physics and Electronics at Rhodes University.

In ceremonies at both sites in Australia and South Africa, the SKA Observatory celebrated the start of construction of its world-leading radio telescopes and announced €300 million worth of construction contracts.

A global team of astronomers, including many based in South Africa, have measured the fuel for star formation in galaxies as they were 4 billion years ago. The researchers made use of the MeerKAT radio telescope to observe neutral hydrogen gas, which is the most abundant element in the universe, and the material from which stars are formed. Observation of distant galaxies was one of the prime design drivers for MeerKAT, which is built and run by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO).

The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) has released today a new MeerKAT telescope image of the centre of our Galaxy, showing radio emission from the region with unprecedented clarity and depth. The international team behind the work is publishing the initial science highlights from this image in The Astrophysical Journal. The article is accompanied by a public release of the data to the worldwide astronomical community for their further scientific exploration.