ATNF News December 2024
Welcome to our last newsletter for 2024, just in time to wish you all a great holiday season.
It's also a chance to remind everyone that proposals are due this Monday, 16 December. Please submit your applications into OPAL.
Many of you will notice as you're applying that our website has been updated. Our website is an important part of our facility operations and, as such, is a complicated project which will continue over the next six months.
We invite everyone to provide feedback or note any issues through the email address ATNFwebsite@csiro.au.
The ATNF and our partners at SKAO were on show at the recent International Conference for Research Infrastructure (ICRI), facilitated by CSIRO in Brisbane. Astronomy infrastructure was certainly a highlight, and it was great to share the incredible work we do now and into the future.
If you'd like to read about our work in more depth, I encourage you to go through our annual report for 2023-2024, now available and discussed below.
You may have been aware that we were seeking to fill new positions created to fulfil the future demands on our facility. I'm pleased to say that we are close to announcing all those positions. Information will be published on our website.
Though many staff will be away between Christmas and New Year, our telescopes will still be operating and our usual modes of enquiry will be available.
Thanks for being part of the ATNF community in 2024, and we'll see you next year.
Douglas Bock, ATNF Director
Our annual report has been published
Covering the Australian financial year from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024, the annual report is a summary of our activities within that period. This includes technology upgrades, scientific discoveries and a record of time spent observing.
Some highlights from the report which may interest you are:
Download the full 2023-2024 ATNF annual report from our website.
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, and one of our most cited publications, PSRCAT provides command-line and web-interface access to over 200 parameters for 3748 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.
Meet Lawrence Toomey
So much of the work we do at the ATNF involves managing data and making it accessible for researchers around the world. From fast radio bursts to odd radio circles, a lot of great discoveries would not be possible without these pipelines, catalogues and archives. One of the people working behind the scenes on these is Lawrence Toomey, our senior research technician.
A furniture maker for 20 years, Lawrence undertook a dramatic career change into astronomy where he now focuses on the pipelines that archive data from Murriyang, our Parkes radio telescope and manages the pulsar catalogue, PSRCAT.
"I love supporting astronomers to do cutting edge science with our instruments, something I've done across my 12 years at CSIRO."
This year had a particular highlight, with the publication of Lawrence's first paper. The paper outlines SDHDF, a file format he led the development on, which solves the problem of storing massive comprehensively described datasets from telescope receivers with multiple beams, such as our forthcoming CryoPAF receiver.
A year of progress in diversity, inclusion and belonging
As we reflect on the past year, the journey toward fostering diversity, inclusion, and belonging (DIB) has been one of growth, learning, and impactful change.
We’ve taken meaningful strides across the ATNF, launching our 2024-2026 DIB action plan in February. Many of our workforce diversity targets are on track to be achieved, as well as exceeding our Indigenous recruitment target of 3% (now 6%) and women in technical roles of 10% (now 10.4%). Our DIB Committee will continue to identify the key challenges to creating an inclusive culture within the ATNF, and work towards embedding DIB into our business-as-usual activities.
Supporting our mental health and well-being
As the year wraps up, it can be a time of additional pressure, amplifying stress and personal challenges, so it is important to prioritise our mental health and well-being. Some simple strategies can help mitigate the ups and downs of the holiday season, like identifying triggers, acknowledging your feelings, setting healthy boundaries, taking breaks and engaging in joyful activities.
Details on these and more can be found on our website.
Organisations in Australia such as Lifeline (13 11 14) and 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) are always available to help. For our international colleagues, consider organisations like Befrienders Worldwide and UN Women which offer directories for mental health and domestic violence resources across various countries.