Mike is in the NASSP Master Program - finishing this year. His thesis is in the area of Cataclysmic Variable Star Systems and specifically at the H-alpha emission spectra of a hybernating CV in order to ascertain and describe the nature of its mass transfer activity. Mike is supervised by Darragh O'Donoghue and Dave Kilkenny.

Charles attended Rhodes University and graduated with Majors in Physics and Chemistry.

He enjoys photography and travel.

Ed Elson is a masters student in the National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme. After completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Natal, he moved to Cape Town to continue with his honours in astronomy at UCT as part of the NASSP. His research interests include observational cosmology as well as large scale structures in our Universe. Ed is currently working on optimization techniques for modern cosmological surveys, under the supervision of Bruce Bassett at the South African Astronomical Observatory.

Phenas is an Honours student on the NASSP course. His research domain is High energy (Gamma Rays).

Patrice's academic background is in Applied Mathematics from Metz University in France. He is a Mathematics Teacher in a Public High School in Gabon (Central Africa). Patrice is taking a break from work to further his Understanding and Mastery of Astrophysics and Space Science.

Patrice's Research Interest are Theroretical and observational study of Dark Energy and Dark Matter.

Annelie is doing honours in NASSP till the end of 2005. She is a very friendly person and loves the outdoor life, especially the nightskies! Annelie also likes to give a helping hand where she can. Her project is about Extreme Helium Stars and her supervisor is Dave Kilkenny.

Keo's collaboration with the South African Observatory Astronomers goes back to 2003 when he was working on his BSc (honours) project entitled "Near Earth Objects" (NEOs). In this mini project, Keo studied NEO such as asteroids and comets whose orbit come so close to Earth's such that there exist a probability of collision with Earth.

At present Keo is working on his MSc thesis entitled "Queue Scheduling Algorith for SALT". The thesis involves simulating SALT's queue schedules, the objective being to make the telescope function optimally and efficiently.

Mellony is a NASSP Master's student working on her MSc project under Darragh O'Donoghue at the SAAO.

Mellony's interests are in the astronomical instrumetnation and her project is in telescope control - ultimately to get the 30" telescope remotely operated via the internet.

Thapelo's work is on quality control of astronomical CCD observations.

Ewald finished his BSc (Geomatics) in 2004. Ewald is currently studying towards a BSc(Hons) Astrophysics through NASSP. His honours project is about asteroseismology and is supervised by Dave Kilkenny. He's interested in numerical computation of real world problems, asteroseismology and pretty much anything that is unusual like CV's, neutron stars etc.