Redshifts are crucial for nearly all extragalactic and cosmological studies. Upcoming wide-field surveys, such as the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU), will catalogue millions of sources, making spectroscopic follow-ups unfeasible at scale. Though sensitive to band selection and availability, photometry yields redshifts (photo-$\textit{z}$s) for fainter sources while optimising telescope...
The successful automation of the ANU 2.3m telescope has unlocked the potential for extensive spectroscopic campaigns with the existing WiFeS integral field spectrograph. In this poster we describe a complementary near-infrared spectrograph concept to be located at the second Nasmyth focus. We present two conceptual designs for NIR spectrographs covering the J and H band, as well as highlight...
The VAST Survey has been collecting data over the last four years using ASKAP to study radio transients. It has provided us with the most comprehensive radio time domain survey ever conducted, which gives us an invaluable opportunity to study radio transients, particularly Gamma-ray Burst (GRB) orphan afterglows, an area yet to be investigated using this dataset. GRBs are relativistic...
We present KAKAPO, the Kepler and K2 Analysis of Phast-evolving Objects pipeline for detecting transients in the Kepler/K2 space telescope. KAKAPO reliably recovers known transient events using effective Point-Spread Function Correlation matching and is currently searching for new events. In this poster we present the pipeline and the initial results.
With the deprecation of Drupal 7 in January 2025, Data Central has fully transitioned the Lens platform to Django, a robust Python-based web framework. Originally developed in PHP and Drupal in 2015, Lens has long supported Time Allocation Committees (TAC) across major facilities such as the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT). Since being used for the 2024B semester on the ANU 2.3m Telescope,...
The University of Southern Queensland operates Mt Kent Observatory as a robotic and remote-access astronomical and space research facility on behalf of Australian and international partners. The site hosts robotic telescopes for MINERVA-Australis exoplanet characterisation, for Stellar Observations Network Group asteroseismology, and for Shared Skies partnership remote-access astronomy. The...
M67 is a dynamically evolved open cluster in the Milky Way, making it an ideal testbed for stellar and binary evolution theory. Due to its nearness and relatively low levels of dust in the line-of-sight, it has been extensively observed. We create $N$-body models of the old open cluster M67 (NGC 2682), taking into account its dynamical evolution as well as stellar and binary evolution of its...
Since their discovery in 1912, the origin of cosmic rays remains a mystery. The energy spectrum of cosmic rays suggests that these charged particles can be accelerated up to PeV energies within our Galaxy by so-called PeVatrons. As these charged particles propagate through the Galaxy, they are deflected by interstellar magnetic fields, as such we cannot trace them back. Instead, alternative...
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), launched in 2010, is a monitoring mission capturing full disk images of the Sun at a number of wavelengths with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. The SDO has generated an enormous amount of data over its operational lifetime, making it necessary to store the data in a searchable database for efficient access. We have established the...
This poster showcases how interstellar absorption features in high-resolution optical spectra from the GALAH survey — including neutral potassium (K I) and diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) — can be used to trace the cold ISM across our Galaxy.
To highlight this amazing potential, we present first results by Nguyen, Buder et al. (in prep.), where we combine GALAH K I absorption with GASKAP HI...
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) contains a wealth of information on asteroids. As irregularly shaped asteroids tumble across the TESS field their brightness changes periodically. To date TESS has observed thousands of asteroids at high cadence. With the TESSELLATE transient pipeline we have identified and extracted 10 minute cadence lightcurves of all asteroids brighter than...
We present an overview of the science program and instrument design for VelocePol - a polarimetric module for the Veloce spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope. This will provide much needed spectropolarimetric capabilities in the Southern sky for studies of stellar magnetism in the coming era of SKA-low and PLATO.
The discovery of diffuse radio emission in galaxy clusters has been key to understanding the physical non-thermal processes shaping large-scale structures. For many years, galaxy groups were not contemplated as distinct astrophysical systems but rather as low-mass extensions of galaxy clusters. In reality, galaxy groups are common yet critical environments for studying galaxy evolution, the...
The origin of the slow solar wind (SSW) remains an open question in solar physics, with significant implications for understanding space weather and its impact on Earth. A leading hypothesis for the SSW origin is interchange reconnection at the interface between open and closed magnetic flux in the corona, suggesting that the closed flux near coronal hole boundaries influences the composition...
Optical communication is an alternative to radio for ground-to-space communication, providing more flexibility, larger bandwidth, and higher security. However, optical links are much more sensitive to the atmospheric turbulence. While downlinks can be corrected with adaptive optics (AO) at the ground terminal, uplinks present a more significant challenge due to power and space constraints. We...
