After more than two decades I have finally converted my website from XHTML 1.0 to HTML 5 to improve the markup and make use of the latest web features. This change goes hand in hand with a general redesign and updated style sheet based on CSS 3.
2024
– My website has moved
CSIRO has decided to take down the personal websites of people who are no longer affiliated with them by 4 December 2024. I am therefore forced to migrate this website to a different server after 17 years. From now on my website will be available at the URL http://astro.tobias-westmeier.de/. Please update your links and bookmarks accordingly.
– SoFiA 2.6 released
A new stable release, SoFiA 2.6, of the Source Finding Application brings plenty of improvements and additional features, most notably the ability to load a source mask without having to rerun the source finder or linker, the option of supplying a flagging cube, support for the AST library and the ability to compile SoFiA with a C++ compiler. Please see the release notes on GitLab for more information.
– Second WALLABY data release
The second WALLABY public data release is out! PDR2 releases source catalogues, images, spectra and kinematic models of about 1800 galaxies to the community. These are available from CADC and CASDA, either through your web browser or via the VO TAP protocol. Please see the data release notes on the WALLABY website for more information about the release and how to access the data. The associated data release paper (Murugeshan, Deg, Westmeier et al., PASA, in press) is available on arXiv.
– IAU General Assembly
I delivered a WALLABY update at the IAU General Assembly in Cape Town to report on the latest WALLABY science results and public data release. A video recording of my talk (and the entire session) is available on YouTube.
Galaxies in the NGC 5044 field released as part of WALLABY PDR2.
2022
– First WALLABY data release
The WALLABY survey has released its first data from phase 1 of the pilot survey to the public. The data release includes catalogues, images and spectra of about 600 galaxies detected in H Ⅰ emission as well as kinematic models for more than 100 spatially resolved galaxies. The data release is accompanied by a media release and two papers (DOI:10.1017/pasa.2022.50, DOI:10.1017/pasa.2022.43) describing the data.
– SoFiA 2.5 released
A new stable version of the SoFiA source finding pipeline, SoFiA 2.5, has been released to the public. Notable new features include position–velocity diagrams and installation via Docker container.
– Outcome of ASKAP SSP review
The outcome of the formal review of all ASKAP survey science projects has been announced today. The WALLABY survey has received the highest possible mark of A and has been allocated 8832 h over the first 5 years of full ASKAP operations. Congratulations to the entire WALLABY team on this excellent outcome!
2021
– SoFiA 2 paper out
The SoFiA 2 description paper has been accepted for publication in MNRAS. A copy of the accepted version is available on arXiv:2106.15789.
– SoFiA 2.3 released
A new stable version of the H Ⅰ source finding pipeline, SoFiA 2.3, is now available for download from GitHub. It comes with numerous improvements and new features as detailed in the release notes.
2020
HI map of galaxies detected in the WALLABY pilot survey field of the Hydra cluster.
– WALLABY overview paper
The WALLABY overview paper has been accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Science. A copy of the accepted manuscript is available for download from arXiv.
– SoFiA 2.2 released
The latest stable version of our H Ⅰ source finding pipeline, SoFiA 2.2.0, is available for download from GitHub. SoFiA is now fully multi-threaded, resulting in a significant improvement in speed on multi-core machines.
– First WALLABY pilot data
The first WALLABY pilot survey field in the direction of the Hydra cluster has been calibrated and imaged. The spectacular moment map of the Hydra field produced by SoFiA is featured on the ATNF Daily Astronomy Picture and in the March issue of the ASKAP Commissioning Update.
2019
– Start of ASKAP pilot surveys
As announced in the latest ASKAP Commissioning Update (PDF), the ASKAP pilot surveys have officially started, with 100 h of observing time allocated to each project for testing their survey strategies. The first scientific results from the pilot surveys are expected to be released soon.
– First stable release of SoFiA 2
The first stable version of SoFiA 2 has been released and is available on GitHub. For SoFiA 2 we converted the entire code base from the old mix of Python, Cython and C++ to plain C. As a result, SoFiA 2 is significantly easier to install, requires significantly less memory, and runs much faster by at least a factor of two. The conversion to C will also allow us to more easily parallelise the pipeline, which is currently work in progress.
– SoFiA 1.3 released
Today we released SoFiA 1.3, the latest stable release of the Source Fining Application. The latest version adds several new features, including quality flags, additional linker filtering options, automated flagging of residual continuum emission and memory usage tracking. In addition, several bugs throughout the pipeline have been fixed, and some of the existing features have been improved, most notably mask dilation, reliability filtering and the graphical user interface.
2018
– First WALLABY early-science paper
The first WALLABY early science paper on the NGC 7162 group by my student Tristan Reynolds has been accepted for publication in MNRAS and is now available from ADS and arXiv.
The WALLABY survey has a new website at https://wallaby-survey.org/ with the latest information and updates on early science data processing and other WALLABY activities.
– Joint ICRAR/CASS radio school
ICRAR and CSIRO will jointly host the 2018 ICRAR/CASS Radio School in Geraldton, Western Australia, during the week of October 1–5, 2018. The school will have a focus on ASKAP and MWA data processing and include a day trip to the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory. The registration deadline was 6 July 2018.
2017
All-sky map of high-velocity gas around the Milky Way, colour-coded by radial velocity.
Today we released version 1.1 of SoFiA, the H Ⅰ source finding pipeline. The source code and detailed information about SoFiA are available on GitHub. SoFiA 1.1 is also featured on the ATNF Daily Astronomy Picture.
– Sculptor group paper out
A new paper presenting a deep H Ⅰ survey of the Sculptor group region with the Parkes telescope appears in MNRAS today: Westmeier et al. 2017, MNRAS, 472, 4832. Overall, we detect 31 H Ⅰ sources (8 of which are new); the resulting H Ⅰ mass function is essentially flat in agreement with previous group studies. The results are also featured on the ATNF Daily Astronomy Picture.
– Experimental FITS viewer
An experimental version of a new web-based FITS data viewer is now online. The viewer is entirely written in JavaScript and should work in all modern web browsers. It is designed to display both 2-D and 3-D image data and is capable of loading local FITS files as well.
– ASKAP early-science observations started
ASKAP has officially started early science observations, as announced in a press release by the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science.
The Australian Square Kilometre Pathfinder (SKA) at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia.
Today we released version 1.0 of SoFiA, the H Ⅰ source finding pipeline. The source code and detailed information about SoFiA are available on GitHub.
2015
Phased Array Feed (PAF) installed in the primary focus of one of the ASKAP antennas a the MRO.
– CSIRO Chairman’s Medal
Congratulations to the entire ASKAP team on winning CSIRO’s most prestigious award, the 2015 Chairman’s Medal, for “revolutionising astronomy by developing a spectacular new capability for observing wide areas of the sky using the world’s first wide-field imaging receivers for radio astronomy on the antennas of the ASKAP radio telescope”.
– New WALLABY logo
The WALLABY project launched its new logo which is featured as today’s ATNF daily astronomy picture and will help to increase the project’s visibility among the astronomy community as well as the general public.
– Paper on Milky Way satellites
The results of our search for H Ⅰ in nine newly discovered Milky Way satellite galaxy candidates is featured on today’s ATNF daily astronomy picture.
– Media release
In today’s joint AAO/ICRAR/CSIRO media release, “A Galaxy’s Snacking Habits Revealed”, we present the results of a multi-wavelength study of the chemical composition and evolution of the interacting galaxy pair NGC 1512/1510 published in MNRAS. Additional information about the release is available on the website of Ángel López-Sánchez. The work has also been featured on today’s ATNF Daily Astronomy Picture.
The SoFiA paper has been accepted for publication in MNRAS and can now be downloaded from ADS and arXiv. SoFiA was also featured on the ATNF daily astronomy picture.
2011–2014
– Science news article
There is an interesting news article in Science News on our latest paper studying the ionised component of the Magellanic Stream (Fox et al. 2014).
– New software packages
New H Ⅰ source finding and parametrisation software is now available for download:
BusyFit – fitting the Busy Function to the integrated spectra of galaxies
– SKA site selection outcome announced
The outcome of the SKA site selection process has been announced, with both Australia/New Zealand and southern Africa getting part of the SKA. The details of the dual-site approach are explained on the SKA website.
– TheSkyNet citizen science project
TheSkyNet is now online! TheSkyNet is a citizen science project that allows participants to donate computer processing time to research projects in radio astronomy. One of the intended applications for theSkyNet is source finding on HIPASS data cubes and ASKAP simulations.
