Director's Update

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue49 1–31 March 2024

Welcome to the first Autumn Lunations.

In the last month it was a real highlight to be at the celebration of 10 years since commencement of the of SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey, which also marked the release of the data release 4. The day showcased how SkyMapper has a wonderful legacy of discover from the most metal poor stars to the most massive black holes in the Universe. 

The month also saw the announcement from Christian Wolf and colleagues about the discovery of the most luminous object in the Universe. The paper published in Nature Astronomy describes a black-hole accreting 1 solar mass per day, and made quite a media splash!

It was also a pleasure to be at the welcome and information day for new students last week, complete with dancing sharks. I still don’t know why there were dancing sharks, but it was great to see many new faces and the supportive network of our senior students.

You will have noticed directly or indirectly the move back into Woolley, which has gone (almost) incident free.  Many thanks Cate and team for organising this operation! This move has coincided with many people being on site at MSO and I wanted to note the great atmosphere in recent weeks, including full theatres colloquia and standing room only at coffee!

-Stuart -

Image: Group photo of 20 years of the SkyMapper team.