Speaker
Description
Southern Africa is becoming a beacon for astronomy throughout the electromagnetic spectrum: In all wavebands accessible from ground, the largest astronomical facilities are either operational or in the process of being set up in the region, see e.g. [1].
The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) in Sutherland (South Africa), measuring 11m in diameter, is the largest single optical telescope in the Southern hemisphere [2]. The deployment of the telescopes of the MeerKAT radio telescope, being the largest and most powerful radio telescope in the Southern hemisphere, has just completed [3]. The 64-dish MeerKAT telescopes will later develop into the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the most sensitive radio telescope on Earth, utilizing outlier station all over Southern Africa [4]. The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) telescopes [5] in the Khomas highlands in Namibia are the largest and most powerful system of Cherenkov telescopes to study very high energy (E>100 GeV) gamma-rays. For its successor, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) [6,7], Namibia has been voted second of possible countries to host the Southern part [8,9].
Against this background, the current situation of astronomical research and education in Namibia will be reviewed, specifically focusing on recent developments.
