An astronomer from Curtin University discovered 49 new galaxies from just three hours of operating the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.

Dr Marcin Glowacki was leading an international collaboration aiming to study the star-forming gas in a single radio galaxy.

However, while the team didn’t discover the star-forming gas in the galaxy they were studying, they instead uncovered other galaxies when inspecting the data later.

This week, Dr Glowacki tells the story behind his incredible finding.