with Dr Moses Mogotsi and Dr Nicolas Erasmus

Welcome to the very first episode of The Cosmic Savannah!

In this episode, we introduce ourselves and our vision for the podcast, SALT Astronomer Dr Moses Mogotsi describes what it’s like to use the biggest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere and Dr Nicolas Erasmus tells us about the hunt for near-earth asteroids.

The Sutherland Plateau, SAAO.

SAAO Researcher Dr Nicolas Erasmus and his MSc student Petro Janse Van Rensburg observed a large (1-2 km) asteroid passing Earth at about 75 times the distance to the moon. But in the background, a distant spiral galaxy!

The Cosmic Savannah is created and hosted by Dr Jacinta Delhaize and Dr Daniel Cunnama.

Jacinta is a radio astronomer based at the University of Cape Town. She is a South African Radio Astronomical Observatory (SARAO) Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Dan is the Science Engagement Astronomer at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO).

Episode Links:SAAO: http://www.saao.ac.zaATLAS: http://atlas.fallingstar.comSALT: http://www.salt.ac.zaMinor Planet Center: https://minorplanetcenter.net/SARAO: https://www.ska.ac.za/about/sarao/UCT Astronomy: http://www.ast.uct.ac.za/African VLBI Network: https://www.ska.ac.za/science-engineering/avn/

This week’s guests:

Dr Moses MogotsiDr Nicolas Erasmus