News

Exploring and interrogating astrophysical data in virtual reality

Scientists across all disciplines increasingly rely on machine learning algorithms to analyse and sort datasets of ever increasing volume and complexity. These algorithms are great at extracting trends and outliers, and automate the data analysis process to a great extent, but science being also about not missing the unexpected, scientists still need to be able to closely inspect their data … Read More

MIGHTEE releases Early Science results

Since the MeerKAT radio telescope was inaugurated in 2018, is has been used extensively for observations for the MeerKAT Large Survey Projects, also called LSPs. Of the eight LSPs that were approved even before MeerKAT was ready for full operations, five projects process their data on the IDIA/ilifu research cloud. One of those projects is MIGHTEE. It is a galaxy … Read More

Science Belongs To All Of Us – NSTF “Science Oscar” For Science Communicator Prof Carolina Ödman

By Nicklaus Kruger, UWC Institutional Advancement South Africa is a country of many languages – but for many of us, “science” isn’t one of them. Astrophysicist and Associate Professor Carolina Ödman has made it her mission to translate and share the joys of science with everyone – and her efforts have earned her the coveted Communication & Outreach Award at the NSTF-32 National … Read More

Administrator, IDIA Projects

UPDATE: This position is now filled. Role Clarification & Key Performance Areas The Inter-University Institute for Data-Intensive Astronomy (IDIA) seeks to appoint an Administrator and Project Officer in support of its Development and Outreach programme. Full advert and application on the UWC website here. Provide administrative, executive and logistical support to the IDIA Associate Director for Development and Outreach Provide … Read More

Data Scientist

IDIA seeks to appoint a Data Scientist to work on the BRICS Intelligent Telescope and Data Network (BITDN), and the IDIA hackathon programme. The BITDN is a BRICS flagship programme in astronomy to develop a telescope and data network. It will draw on the opportunities presented by multi-wavelength space- and ground-based facilities that are accessed by the BRICS group for … Read More

New CARTA beta Release

CARTA forges ahead with a new beta release. As there is now a stable codebase, the CARTA team is confident to release beta versions for astronomers to use. The beta server (https://carta-beta.idia.ac.za) has now been upgraded to the latest public beta release (v3.0.0-beta1). Highlights of this release include: A new multi-panel view, which allows multiple images to be viewed side by side. Click the cog button in … Read More

New analysis of more than 2000 Galaxies with MeerKAT

Using early science data for the MIGHTEE project on the MeerKAT radio telescope, a researcher at the University of the Western Cape – with collaborators from eight countries, including four other South African Institutions – has analysed over 2000 galaxies, growing our understanding of the evolution of galaxies over cosmic time. Dr Fangxia An – a postdoctoral researcher at IDIA … Read More

New paper leads to a better understanding of radio telescopes

Radio telescopes are very complex instruments. Unlike telescopes using mirrors that measure visible or infra-red light, most modern radio telescopes are made of many antennae, each acting like a pixel. Combining the signals of each of the antennae, like the 64 dishes of the MeerKAT telescope is very complex and adding them into what is called the “primary beam”, is … Read More

New group of galaxies discovered by the MIGHTEE team

When the science world decided to embark on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, serendipitous discovery – essentially chance findings – was boldly cited as a scientific goal. The MeerKAT telescope is already proving this bet right, as new, previously unidentified galaxies were discovered by the MIGHTEE project team in a well-studied area in the sky. That area, called XMM-LSS … Read More