ATNF News 5 | February 2024
Welcome to our first newsletter for 2025.
Thank you to everyone who submitted a proposal in December for our 2025APR observing semester. The time allocation committee has met and results of the application process will be announced on 1 March.
Many of you will have noticed when you submitted your proposal that our website has been updated. Our website is an important part of our facility operations and connecting to our community, including all our information for ATUC. The update is a complex project due to the breadth of resources on the site, so content migration and adaption will continue. We invite you to provide feedback or note any issues via email to ATNFwebsite@csiro.au.
You may have been aware that we recently modified our leadership structure to fulfil the future demands on our facility and ensure we continue to provide world-class infrastructure. The opportunity was right for this, as we had both the Head of Operations and Head of Technology announce their retirement and our Head of Science move to a new role. The new structure is now in place, with more detail in this newsletter and on our website.
Late last year, we published our annual report, which covers ATNF activities across the Australian financial year: 1 July 2023 – 30 June 2024. This includes technology upgrades, scientific discoveries and a record of time spent observing. Read the full 2023-24 ATNF annual report here.
Some highlights from the report which may interest you are:
Many of you would have contributed to these numbers. Thank you for being part of the ATNF community in 2024. I look forward to a great 2025.
Douglas Bock, ATNF Director
BIGCAT upgrade on track for 2025 rollout
For our Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), 2024 marked a year of great progress for its BIGCAT upgrade. The engineering team have now completed the assembly of all the new digitiser modules (jimbles) and ran successful tests in our Marsfield labs. Recent BIGCAT tests last month demonstrated significant milestones, with the team successfully observing with three BIGCAT jimbles on three antennas and performing real-time correlation with the new GPU correlator, all controlled by the new control software.
There will be a period of downtime for ATCA from March while the current broadband backend (CABB) is decommissioned and the new backend is installed and tested, with freshly replaced digitisers and correlator. Once commissioned, BIGCAT will be offered to the astronomy community in shared-risk mode in the April 2025 observing semester. We will then begin replacing the RF modules, which will double the available bandwidth, in the second half of 2025. Stay tuned for more updates as BIGCAT is commissioned, enhancing ATCA's capabilities for the astronomy community.
Our BIGCAT Project Scientist lead, Dr Elizabeth Mahony, was featured in a recent CSIRO article on what we’re looking forward to in 2025.
Get to know our pulsar catalogue
The ATNF pulsar catalogue, PSRCAT, is now in its 20th year and – with the launch of our updated website – has now been released in its 80th version.
A valued resource within the global pulsar astronomy research community, PSRCAT provides command-line and web-interface access to over 200 parameters for 3868 pulsars so far.
The command-line interface is installed on hundreds of personal computers and servers across the globe as well as observing systems for many radio telescopes including Murriyang, our Parkes radio telescope.
The community relies on the up-to-date parameters provided by the catalogue for projects such as pulsar timing and folding of time-series data for pulsar emission and rotation studies.
ATNF staff have kept the catalogue up to date since PSRCAT's beginnings in 2004. Collating parameters from published peer-reviewed articles is carried out quarterly.
As a user and an author, you can help us update the catalogue as quickly as possible by following our guidelines for publishing pulsar parameters.
While there are many ways to present pulsar data in papers, we recommend:
By following these guidelines we can ensure PSRCAT continues to provide this high-quality resource in a timely fashion.
You can explore PSRCAT on our updated website, and the PSRCAT v2 source code and database files are published on CSIRO's Data Access Portal.
Update to our leadership structure
Last year, with two retirements and a role change, we were in a position to review the existing leadership structure and imagine a new one.
Over several months, the ATNF team worked together to shape the leadership and program structure of the national facility to ensure we’re in a position to realise our vision for the ATNF into the future.
The individuals stepping into the eight ATNF leadership roles are:
Céline d’Orgeville – ATNF Program Director, Marsfield. As our new ATNF Program Director, Celine will hold overall responsibility for the ATNF’s day-to day operations and lead the ATNF to develop and manage projects which continue our outstanding record in radio astronomy research and innovation.
Daleen Koch – Head of ATNF Operations, Geraldton. As Head of ATNF Operations, Daleen will be responsible for the operational excellence of the ATNF telescopes and lead the ATNF Operations team.
Stephen Ord – Head of ATNF Software and Scientific Computing, Marsfield. In this role, Stephen will lead our team and portfolio of projects in software and scientific computing and engage with the global astronomy community on our capability in this area.
George Hobbs – Head of ATNF Science, Marsfield. As Head of ATNF Science, George will focus on science excellence across the ATNF, lead the ATNF Science team, and support our user community.
Stephanie Smith – Head of ATNF Instrumentation, Marsfield. Stephanie will be taking on the Head of ATNF Instrumentation role, which leads the group focused on operating and improving our telescope instrumentation and technologies.
Cathryn Trott – ATNF Chief Scientist, Kensington. As ATNF Chief Scientist, Cath will lead the direction for our astrophysics research, development of our research capability strategy, and our engagement with the global astronomy community.
Mark Bowen – ATNF Chief Engineer, Marsfield. The focus of the ATNF Chief Engineer is on the delivery of our major instrumentation projects and external contracts, and has responsibility for our standards in project management, engineering design and configuration control.
Keith Bannister – ATNF Chief Technologist, Marsfield. Bringing his experience at the intersection of astronomy and engineering, Keith will set the strategy for future ATNF technology development and oversee a portfolio of future-focused technology development projects.
For more information on our new team and the ATNF leadership structure, visit the website.
Communication lines
These appointments do not change communication contacts for the community. General ATNF-related feedback is via the ATNF Users Committee (ATUC). Members of ATUC can be contacted directly, or you can submit a form.
For specific discussions relating to our observatories and archives, our Senior Systems Scientists are: