On 29 April 2014, a rare event was observed throughout Southern Africa: the passing of a minor planet, Chariklo, in front of a distant star. Chariklo is a ~250-km diameter Centaur, an outer Solar System object whose orbit has been perturbed inward by the giant planets. It is located roughly 17 times as far away from the Sun as the Earth. […]
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3D-HST photometric catalogs released
Rosalind Skelton, a PDP Postdoctoral Fellow at SAAO, and the 3D-HST team are happy to announce the release of photometric catalogs for more than 200 000 objects in the deep 3D-HST/CANDELS fields (AEGIS, COSMOS, GOODS-North, GOODS-South and the UDS). The catalogs are described in depth in Skelton et al. 2014 (ApJS submitted, http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.3689). Data Release […]
Storm damages infrastructure in Sutherland
A serious storm hit the Northern Cape over the weekend with torrential rains and high winds lashing the area. The town of Sutherland and our nearby observing station have been without electricity since early morning on 8 January. In addition to the power outage, our high-speed fibre-optic cable was damaged when flood waters washed away […]
Cape Town Observers Capture Juno Satellite Flyby
On the night of Wednesday 9th October, NASA’s Juno spacecraft swept across Cape Town’s skies during a close Earth flyby. By swinging past the Earth so closely during a “gravity assist manoeuvre”, Juno was able to use the Earth’s gravity to give it the extra speed it needed to make its way on to Jupiter […]
HRS Arrives and installation is underway
Sometime on the 3rd of September a truck drove right past SALT and tried to deliver a High Resolution Spectrograph to the neighbouring KMTNet construction site. Happily we were able to convince the driver to turn around and come back to SALT. A blow-by-blow account of the action can be found on the SALT Astro […]
SA Astroinformatics Alliance Launched
Astronomical agreement signed for big data! 2 August 2013, Cape Town – The National Research Foundation’s (NRF) three astronomical facilities have formed the South African Astroinformatics Alliance (SA3 pronounced “SA cubed”), which serves as a virtual observatory for the country. The directors of the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) and the […]
First Remote Observing run at SAAO
On the nights of 12 & 13 July 2013, a new era of observing was ushered in at the SAAO. Astronomers Dr. Marissa Kotze and Dr. Amanda Gulbis hosted inaugural sessions of remote observing for the SHOC instrument on the 74″ telescope. The telescope was awarded to Dr. Kotze for a full week to observe […]
Chasing Asteroid 1998 QE2
Asteroid 1998 QE2 passed the Earth by the other day. The SAAO was part of an international effort to record its passing. This video was filmed and produced by Kai Staats.
