The auditorium for the 32nd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the world's largest astronomy conference, held at the Cape Town International Conference Centre in Cape Town, South Africa on August 6, 2024. (Photo by Misha Jordan/Gallo Images via Getty Images)
vinegarSouth Africa's two largest astronomy instruments, the South African Large Telescope (SALT) and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), will play a central role at the 32nd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Cape Town this week.
The event marks a pivotal moment in the Union's more than 100-year history and will be the first to be held in Africa in a fully open-access format, with participation from around the world.
Every three years, members have the opportunity to work with the Union to make recommendations on scientific, administrative and financial matters that have broad and significant impact on the Union and the astronomy community.
The General Assembly will vote on three resolutions to be tabled during its business session in Cape Town. The IAU Resolutions Committee approved draft resolutions, including one titled “Protection of Dark and Quiet Skies,” which would look into harmful interference from satellite constellations.
The other two resolutions revolve around the Union's ability to establish a standard lunar astronomical reference system and lunar coordinate time, and the establishment of a coordinated lunar time standard through international agreement.
The Salt Telescope, located in Sutherland in the Northern Cape, is the largest single optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, and the SKA project is an international effort to build the world's largest radio telescope.
The conference will attract over 2,000 international astronomers from 150 countries and will see over 3,000 abstracts submitted. Nearly 50% of the submitted papers are by early career researchers and students.
“The brief covers a wide range of topics, with a particular focus on surveys, galactic astronomy and instruments such as the MeerKAT radio telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope,” said Kevin Govender, the conference's national organizing chair. Mail & Guardian.
To mark the event in South Africa, the SKA telescope will be a major focus at the General Assembly.
The SKA, under construction in the Northern Cape and Australia, is expected to revolutionise radio astronomy – it will be more sensitive, faster and produce higher-resolution images than most radio telescopes.
Its greatest potential is to expand the scope of the universe and answer important questions about it.
SKA-Mid, an array of 197 conventional parabolic antennas, is being built in the Karoo region, while SKA-Low, an array of 131,072 small tree-like antennas, is being built in Western Australia. Both arrays will be spread over long distances, with the furthest antennas 150 km apart in South Africa and 74 km in Australia.
“For the first time, participants will be able to experience an immersive journey to the SKA telescope site in a gaming environment developed by SKACH, the Swiss consortium behind SKAO. [Square Kilometre Array Observatory]” the observatory said in a statement.
Salt, known as “Africa's great eye in the sky”, will also be showcased in a mini version at the event.
Salt can detect light emitted by faint or distant objects in space that are a billion times fainter than the naked eye can see – as faint as a candle flame at distances as far as the moon.
“[The event] “This provides a unique opportunity for people from around the world to engage in education, outreach and research collaboration with their African counterparts,” the African Astronomical Society said.
The IAU General Assembly, organized by the National Research Foundation and supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the African Astronomical Society, will take place from 6 to 15 August 2024.
