Conveners
Astrophysics & Space Science
- There are no conveners in this block
Astrophysics & Space Science
- Brian van Soelen (University of the Free State)
Neutron monitors (NMs), on the Earth’s surface, have been monitoring the near-Earth cosmic ray flux indirectly for nearly 70 years. These monitors do not detect the primary particles flux, but are sensitive to the secondary particles formed in the Earth’s atmosphere during nuclear cascades. More recently, these instruments have been upgraded to provide more accurate and robust measurements,...
The South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) provides state-of-the-art astronomy research facilities to the South African and global astronomy communities, primarily through its flagship project, the Southern African Large Telescope, but also through a unique suite of other telescopes and instruments. In addition, SAAO hosts a range of international projects, ranging from telescopes and...
South Africa is one of the host countries to the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and has built the 64-antenna MeerKAT Telescope as a pathfinder and precursor to the SKA. Prior to the creation of the SKA South Africa project, the sole radio astronomy facility in South Africa was the 26m dish at Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO).
In this talk I'll give an overview of the...
Often, for different astro- and space physics applications, a Fokker-Planck type diffusion-convection equation must be solved to obtain the particle distribution function. The complexity of the problem generally requires a numerical solution in multiple dimensions. In this talk we discuss the use of stochastic differential equations (SDEs) to numerically integrate the 5D (three spatial...
With the commissioning of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a new era in transient astronomy is starting. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is expected to deliver 500 petabytes of information during it's 10 year survey mission. In order to facilitate the rapid follow-up observations, we developed an Artificial Neural Network to rapidly classify transient events detected by LSST. The...
The study of compact stars (CS) is a topic very valuable for the testing of modern physics in order to better understand the behaviour of cold dense nuclear matter. CS (white dwarfs or neutron stars) have no fusion processes occurring within them. The only way these stars are then capable of supporting themselves is through the degeneracy pressure of the fermions that constitute these objects....
