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X-WR-CALNAME:SAAO
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://www.saao.ac.za
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for SAAO
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TZID:Africa/Johannesburg
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TZOFFSETFROM:+0200
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DTSTART:20250101T000000
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DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20250913T200000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20250913T220000
DTSTAMP:20260415T023031
CREATED:20250829T110809Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250908T110743Z
UID:24904-1757793600-1757800800@www.saao.ac.za
SUMMARY:NRF|SAAO Cape Town Open Night
DESCRIPTION:Join us for Open Nights at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Cape Town\, held on the second and fourth Saturday of every month. \nEach evening begins with an engaging presentation on astronomy or a related field of science\, followed by a guided tour of the Observatory’s rich history—including our library\, museum\, and the historic 120-year-old McClean Telescope. \nWeather permitting\, guests will have the opportunity to enjoy stargazing through the McClean and additional smaller telescopes. \n\n\n\nGates open at 7:30 PM.\nFree entry for children aged 6 and under.\n\n\n\nPlease email cptbookings@saao.ac.za or call +27 21 447 0025 if you have any queries regarding bookings. \n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Dr. Prerna Rana \n \nTitle: Listening to the Universe with Pulsars \nAbstract: Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that act like natural cosmic clocks\, sending out regular pulses of radio waves. By carefully measuring the arrival times of these pulses with radio telescopes on Earth\, scientists can detect tiny disturbances caused by passing gravitational waves – ripples in space-time first predicted by Albert Einstein. While observatories like LIGO and Virgo listen for high-frequency gravitational waves from colliding black holes or neutron stars\, Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) are sensitive to very low-frequency waves\, with periods of years to decades. These waves are thought to come from pairs of supermassive black holes orbiting each other in the distant universe. In this talk\, I will introduce what pulsars are\, how we turn them into a galaxy-sized gravitational wave detector\, and what International PTA collaborations will tell us about the hidden universe of giant black holes. \nBio: Dr. Prerna Rana is a postdoctoral researcher in astronomy at the University of Cape Town\, supported by SARAO. She studies pulsars which are rapidly spinning neutron stars that act like cosmic clocks—and uses them to search for gravitational waves\, the tiny ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein. Prerna works with International teams\, including the Indian Pulsar Timing Array\, the African Pulsar Timing group\, and the International Pulsar Timing Array collaborations\, which observe pulsars and combine data from large radio telescopes to detect nanohertz gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binaries in the Universe. Earlier\, during her PhD\, she studied the motion of matter around rotating black holes to better understand the extreme physics of these fascinating objects. \n\n 
URL:https://www.saao.ac.za/event/nrfsaao-cape-town-open-night-14/
LOCATION:Cape Town\, Observatory Rd\, Observatory\, Cape Town\, 7925\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Cape Town Tours
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