Dear friends and colleagues, As one sees the news from across the world, it seems to be an uncertain and challenging global environment at the moment and I hope therefore that reading our 14th edition of Contact will allow you, the reader, to focus your mind on something different and positive, even if only for a short time.
This edition carries a wide variety of stories: you’ll be able to read about the construction highlights for both SKAMid and SKA-Low, these will be regular features in future editions of Contact. There are several stories relating to local stakeholder engagement in both of our telescope host countries, from supercomputing in Australia, through astro-tourism, to my favourite, students from Carnarvon High School in the Karoo, South Africa attending the World Robot Olympiad in Denmark, supported by our colleagues at SARAO. We report on two milestones. The first is five years of ground-breaking science from MeerKAT. We have all seen the superb images and scientific results emerging from the science teams, making MeerKAT, I believe, the premier science instrument on Earth in its frequency range. In February 2024, our South African colleagues are organising a meeting to celebrate the achievements to date. A second milestone is that MWA, the Murchison Widefield Array, has marked a decade of operations and similarly spectacular science. It is undergoing an upgrade as it enters its final phase.
As we did last October in South Africa, just a few weeks ago we hosted the SKAO Council at the SKA-Low site in Western Australia. These visits are essential for Council to physically experience the scale and progress of the construction projects. It is one thing to receive updates in the Council Chamber at HQ, but quite another to walk the ground and gain an understanding of the challenges associated with building not one, but the two largest radio telescopes on Earth. Finally, it is a pleasure to see, on the last page, a list of recent awards and honours to several members of the SKA community. I congratulate them all.
PROF. PHILIP DIAMOND, SKAO DIRECTOR-GENERAL
ABOVE: Prof. Phil Diamond and SKAO Council Chair Dr Catherine Cesarsky contribute to a collaborative artwork piece between SKAO Council members and Wajarri woman Susan Merry. NOVEMBER
2023
C O N TA C T
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