Astrophiz198: Dr Tessa Vernstrom ~ The Evolutionary Map of the Universe

Brendan: Welcome to the Astrophiz Podcasts.
My name is Brendan O ‘Brien and first of all, we would like to acknowledge Australia’s first astronomers, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the traditional owners and custodians of the land we are on.
This episode is produced on Yorta Yorta and Whadjuk Nyoongar country.
We’d also like you to influence your local politicians to do more to mitigate climate change by moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.

We’re now in our ninth year of production with over 190 fabulous interviews with top scientists from all over the world.
Each month, we produce two fabulous episodes.

On the first of each month, Dr. Ian ‘AstroBlog’ Musgrave gives us his Monthly SkyGuide, plus a unique astrophotography challenge.

Then, on the 15th of each month, we publish an interview with a leading astronomer, astrophysicist, space scientist, data scientist, telescope engineer, project manager or particle physicist … and we discover their science journey and rare insights into how they think and conduct their amazing research into exactly how our universe works.

Our audio files and transcripts are available on our website at AstrophizDOTcom and our MP3 files can be freely streamed or downloaded to your favourite device from our SoundCloud channel, our free Audible stream, YouTube podcasts and Apple Podcasts.

And today we’re speaking with an amazing scientist who is successfully doing some of the most challenging and difficult research that can be done in Astrophysics.

You’ll love her stories!

Let’s zoom over now to Perth in Western Australia and meet Dr Tessa Vernstrom.

Hello Tessa.

Tessa: Hi, Brendan.

Brendan: Today, listeners, we’re really excited to be speaking with an amazing researcher and astrophysicist. Please welcome, Dr Tessa Vernstrom.

I’ve been wanting to line up this interview for quite some time now. I first heard Tessa when she was speaking about her work with the awesome ASKAP Radio Telescope Array back in episode 160 a couple of years ago when we piggybacked on a CSIRO online event called the ASCAP recap and Tessa has been a senior research fellow at the University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, known affectionately as ICRAR.
 And I think she’s soon moving back to the CSIRO, which is Australia’s premier science body, where she was awarded the coveted Bolton Fellowship.

Now she was also the Project scientist for a team credited with the discovery of once mysterious ‘Orcs in Space’ aka, ‘Odd Radio Circles’. And today we probably won’t even have time to talk about them, but listeners can find out about orcs in space by going to TinyUrl-DOT-Com/orcsinspace. That’s all lowercase all one word.

Now, today’s science focus is on the EMU survey.

Now, in summary, Tessa is using the world’s most powerful and sensitive instruments to unlock those secrets of the faintest and furthest objects and the most mysterious phenomena in our known universe.

And she’s chosen to work on the most difficult research areas possible.
So, look, thanks for making the time for speaking with us today, Tessa.

Tessa: Thanks so much for having me. It’s nice to think people are interested to hear about what’s going on in radio astronomy and with me.

Brendan: Indeed. Thank you. Okay. Now, before we talk about the EMU project, though, and your amazing research, let’s go right back. And are we going to hear about Minnesota. Can you tell us where you grew up, please, Tessa, and tell us how you became interested in the sciences and in space?

Tessa: Yeah, so that’s right. I did grow up in St. Paul, Minnesota, so many people don’t know that St.Paul is actually the capital. It’s a lovely place to grow up, and I was always kind of interested in science.

So my dad is a physicist, and my mom is a chemist, so I always said that my chances of not being a science nerd were very small.

But, you know, he used to get me books on the Hubble Space Telescope, .and we had our own telescope and I’ve always been a fan of space in general.

I think that when I was in third grade I said I wanted to be a computer scientist and get a PhD in computer science from CalTech.

So I definitely had STEM ambitions from a young age.

Brendan: Very good … Now let’s keep the focus on those ambitions …Tell us a little about those early school days and how did those ambitions change and evolve over time?

Tessa: Funnily enough, I always say that I used to try to fight my inner nerd because when I first started college at the University of Minnesota, I was actually going to major in political science and psychology, with a view to go to law school and maybe go into politics. So I did that for a few years. I even did some psychology research assistant.

I interned at the state government of Minnesota. And it was really fascinating and interesting work, but I thought that it might be a challenging career to go into politics.

And I worried a little bit about things like burnout and just how much passion there is in politics. And I was required to take a science course as part of our electives and I took astronomy and I kind of realized by the end of the semester that it was the only course that I was really enjoying doing the reading for, and this was the first time that I had really studied it you know outside of just looking at amazing pictures and things.

And it was just so mind-blowing … the scale of it all, you know, the vastness, the size of the objects, how massive they are, how far away they are  …. And things like relativity … you know, bending of space time …  I need to switch things up.

So I changed my major to astrophysics, and the rest is history, as they say.

Yeah, I did some research with some of the professors at the University of Minnesota on their infrared telescopes and dark matter halos of galaxies before I finished up there.

Brendan: Fantastic, yes. And the passion for politics has really morphed into, and our listeners will hear your passion for astrophysics as we go through today.

Now, let’s just look a little bit at your career in terms of learning astrophysics. You did your first physics undergraduate degree in Minnesota and then you moved 3,000 kilometers up and west over the border to complete your Master’s in Astrophysics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver,

… and then you stayed on there for your Soctorate in Astrophysics.
Now, can you tell us the thinking behind that move from US to Canada? I take it that it wasn’t political … and the climate isn’t that much different, I suppose. But what about the culture in that move, Tessa?

Tessa: Well, I love the culture in Canada. Minnesota, I think, is a bit similar to kind of stereotypical Canadian culture in a way … and there’s similarities in the weather as well. But funnily enough, when I was applying for graduate school, I hadn’t actually considered Canada at all.

Originally, it was … and it was a bad year for it. I was applying in the year of the economic crisis in 2008, where graduate schools in the U .S. were getting hundreds of more applications than they normally would because the job market was suffering.

So I had a Professor who was like, “You should really look at some of the schools in Canada.”
And I was like, “That’s amazing. Why didn’t I think of this?”
So I was very lucky to get into UBC in Vancouver.

It’s a really good school, great department, and Vancouver is just an amazing city. It’s just so beautiful there. I’m from Minnesota that’s very flat, but in Vancouver,

you have mountains, you have ocean, it’s great!
And Yeah, the Canadian culture is great too. I love Canadians. So I really enjoyed my time there.

Brendan: Excellent! Let’s continue this Canadian story.

After your PhD, you moved 4,000 kilometres east to Toronto, and you took up your first postdoc at the famous Dunlap Institute to work with a renowned Aussie fellow … Professor Bryan Gaensler, who is the a Research Chair at the University of Toronto and Director of a Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Now, was he the first Aussie you worked with? And I just had a look at an early paper on the Cosmic Web that you and Brian published using data from the MWA, the Murchison Widefield Array. Now, it’s out in the remote Western Australian Desert. Now, could you introduce the cosmic web for our new listeners, please, Tessa? And can you tell us, can you tell us what the cosmic web is and what you discovered about it and whether we have found those elusive filaments you referred to? Have we found them yet?

Tessa: Well, yes and no. So for those who don’t know, the cosmic web, we’re talking about the largest scale structure of the universe.
So in the universe, everything is not just a random jumble of objects, but because of gravity, you know, gets pulled together into a structure.

So you’ve got galaxies coming together to form groups. Groups come together to form clusters of thousands of galaxies.

And then these are all connected by a series of filaments. So there’s galaxies along these filaments. And then it’s kind of interspersed with void, so much less dense areas, and so it looks kind of like a web-like pattern,

Hence we call it the cosmic web.

So there’s been a lot of studies. We’ve mapped a lot of this out in optical wavelengths.
So with large surveys like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we can kind of see this structure. But I was looking at it in radio wavelengths. So we called it ‘The Radio Cosmic Web,’ or ‘The Synchrotron Cosmic Web’, because that’s the type of emission you see in radio wavelengths.

And what that’s telling us is more about the magnetic fields.
So we believe that this large structure should just be kind of permeated with magnetic fields that would give off basically kind of its glow of radio light.

But it’s very, very faint. And it kind of depends on how strong those magnetic fields are, but we don’t know how strong they are. So we don’t know how weak this emission is supposed to be.

So that’s what I’ve spent a lot of time to kind of hunting for is this radio emission from these filaments and the space in between galaxies. And we haven’t been able to really image it directly yet,

But I use statistical methods to reach below the noise and look for averages, say hundreds of thousands of filaments and look for radio emission there.
And so we actually have found now the statistical detection of the average of hundreds of thousands of filaments and we see radio emission from these filaments connecting the galaxy clusters.

Brendan: Wow, that’s fantastic, and I bet you just can’t wait for the SKA to come online, which will paint even better pictures. You’ve described the cosmic web beautifully there for us.

Now, just a couple of last things before we dive into the EMU project and your most recent work….

For our early career astrophysicists, we know they’re listening, can you tell us about some of the people who’ve supported your research journey and how you managed that transition from Canada down to the ‘Land Down Under’?

Tessa: Yeah, so I think it’s definitely very important to have good people supporting you in your research journey. So I’ve been incredibly lucky in that even from the very early on, my father was my kind of own private tutor in physics in my early classes … which helped me survive that.

But when I got to UBC, I worked with an amazing PhD supervisor, so Professor Douglas Scott and Professor Jasper Wall. And they were both, yeah, just incredibly supportive, very well connected. They helped me, you know, travel and meet other scientists as well. And I was really lucky to have them.

Very sadly, Jasper Wall passed away this year. He was well known in the Australian Radio Astronomy community and actually worked at the Parkes Radio Telescope during the moon landing.
So he’s been around for a long time, great legacy.

And then even after that, working with Bryan Gaensler when I was a postdoc, he was also just very supportive and trying to help me achieve my career goals. I’ve been very fortunate in that.

And then, yeah, transitioning from Canada down to Australia, thankfully it wasn’t too bad. You know, it helps that they both speak English and rather than say going somewhere in Europe where that’s a bit more of a hurdle.

But it is a long way to come. And Perth is a fairly isolated place, so it makes it hard, you know, traveling or seeing family very often. But other than that, You know, the radio astronomy community down here in Australia is really great and growing very quickly and it’s been great to be able to collaborate with them.

Brendan: Fantastic. Thanks, Tessa. And it’s good to hear you can be hopping on a plane and heading back home to visit friends soon. So that’s really nice. Now, it’s science time now.

Let’s put our propeller hats on. Australian astrophysicists have developed some quirky animal-themed survey and research project names.

They’ve got some great names. We have the Galar Survey, Dingo, Possum, Wallaby, and today we’re going to look at the Emu Survey, where you are the project scientist. I went online and had a go of it. And I’ve done a few classifications and it’s great fun. And we’ll talk about that EMU Citizen Science project soon.

But first, can you outline the origins and aims of the EMU survey and some of the milestones of this project first developed over 15 years ago when ASKAP was just a baby? Tell us about EMU, please.

Tessa: Sure. So I think as you mentioned earlier, it’s the Evolutionary Map of the Universe, or EMU, and we are going to be surveying the entire southern sky at radio wavelengths and going deeper than ever before.

So previous all-sky surveys were done over 20 years ago now, so the best of those being the NRAO VLA Sky Survey, or NVSS, but technology in radio astronomy has advanced so much since then.

So the EMU survey is going to be about 50 times more sensitive than those previous surveys with higher resolution. So this will allow us to not only study our own galaxy in great detail, but also other galaxies and the space between galaxies, you know, like never before.

We expect to detect somewhere on the order of maybe 20 to 25 million galaxies, both those nearby us and very distant ones, that will allow us to study these cosmic magnetic fields, but also galaxy evolution, and active galactic nuclei, or AGN, which are galaxies where the central supermassive black hole is actively eating material.

And in the radio, these galaxies can produce enormous jets or nobs of emission, which are only visible in the radio sky. So we’re hoping for lots of key science areas, so being star forming galaxies, these AGN, clusters of galaxies, the Milky Way, and then cosmology as well. So looking at the very large-scale kind of statistics of the universe.

So we have finished two pilot surveys, and we’ve finished the first year of the full survey of EMU, and it will run over a five -year time scale.

Brendan: Oh, it sounds fantastic and such a increase in capability since the last one. That’s just awesome! Now, a quick follow-up, can you tell us about the EMU survey from your point of view as the Project Scientist for the evolutionary map of the universe? It looks fantastic. What’s your role and what are your responsibilities in this project?

Tessa: So our management team within EMU is four people.

So we have our PI, which is Andrew Hopkins. I’m the project scientist, and then we have Anna Kapinska, who’s our project manager and Josh Marvil, our technology lead.

So as project scientist, I have a lot of roles, but it’s encouraging new members, kind of keeping track of the science that’s going on.

We work together to kind of actually decide what the survey would be.

So where should we look, for how long, you know, that kind of thing. And I run monthly team updates meetings. We’re also organizing an international yearly conference that we’re holding here in Perth soon.

So keeping track of the team members. And then I interface a lot with the observatory as well. So looking at the data quality that we’re getting and feeding that back into them or, you know, if there’s any problems with the observing … things like that.

So a lot of time kind of interfacing with the observatory to make sure things are running smoothly.

Brendan: Fantastic! I had a look at the project and you’ve got over 400 scientists in your team from over from more than 28 countries.

And now you’re generating so much new data that you’re recruiting citizen scientists from all over the globe … and our listeners hopefully …

… and our listeners now, you could pause this podcast and go to TinyurlDOTcom /citizenemu … that’s all lowercase all one word.

Now tell us about this citizen science EMU project please Tessa … it’s been online a few weeks or a month now … what are they doing there and what can they discover? How do they do it and how much of their data has come through the pipeline yet? And why should our listeners jump on board and have a go?

I can recommend it, but what’s your point of view? Why should people join in on the citizen Science Project?

Tessa: First off, I would like to say I’m a huge fan of citizen science in general.

So I think, you know, even if you’re not going to go and do the Emu Radio Galaxy Zoo, I would encourage you to go to Zooniverse and find a project that does suit you. So, you know, there’s underwater things, there’s climate, there’s looking at wildlife. It’s very helpful and it’s, you know, it’s actual a fun sciencey way to kill time rather than maybe just watching TV or something.

You’re actually doing some real science and we do use the data. So to the EMU project specifically with EMU Galaxy Zoo, we’ve had a few iterations of this or other telescope surveys have done similar, but with radio galaxies, we can’t tell how far away they are. and they look very different in the radio than they do at other wavelengths, like at optical or infrared.

So what we want to try to do  is match up our radio galaxy with what we call its host, or the galaxy as seen in infrared or optical, because then we can use that to hopefully get more information about the galaxies themselves and their distances … which is very important to do a bit more science with them.

So one of the main things that you see with these Radio galaxies you’ll be given kind of an image of a radio galaxy, and then images of the same patch of sky at other wavelengths. And we ask you to try and tell us where you think the actual host galaxy is of this radio source. Because, yeah, what we call the morphology of radio galaxies can be very strange.

They can look kind of blobby. They can have these big jets and lobes of emission, things like that. So it’s not always just as a nice cut and dry as like a nice spiral galaxy or something that you might be used to seeing with optical galaxies.

So we have so many of these, like I said, we’re going to be detecting millions of them. And it’s too much for us to do on our own.

So that’s why we need your help.

But the really exciting part about the EMU Radio Galaxy Zoo is a new thing that we’ve added this time, which is asking the citizen scientists to use language to describe the sources as well. So like how they look. Because that can help us categorize what type of source they might be, what type of galaxy.

So we’ve added what we call these tags, so different words to describe the galaxy. And we ask our citizen scientists to say: Is it a bent galaxy? Is it kind of hourglass shaped? Does it have jets? Does it have lobes? Does and have one tail, et cetera.

So that’s a new and exciting part that we’ve added this time, and I’m really excited to see the results from that.

Brendan: Yep, and it is fun. I’ve done a few of them, and I’ll certainly be going back. Citizen science is awesome.

Lots of fun. Okay, look, I had a look at your most recent collaboration on the ArXiv server where data is revealing some details of never seen before filaments linking galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Now, are they the filaments in that paper that we were talking about earlier?

Tessa: Yes, most likely. I’m not sure which one your paper you’re referring to exactly because filaments can refer to a few other things, but yes, we are trying to target those cosmic sub-filaments in the radio again.

Brendan: Fair enough. Okay. Look, where has your most recent work taken you?

Could you tell us about some details of your current research that you’re working on now that’s driving you crazy or totally mysterious? You’ve chosen the most difficult fields to work in.

It may also be astonishingly exciting or perhaps it’s all of those three things at once. What’s going on, Tessa?

Tessa: Well, so my last first author paper was about these filaments and trying to use polarized radio emission to detect them because these shock waves that you might see on these filaments are very polarized and not much else in the radio sky is.

So we can kind of use that then because sometimes when you’re looking for the emission that’s not from galaxies, it’s from the space in between galaxies. It’s so faint and it can get confused very easily.

But if you look in the polarized light, that kind of pops out more. So I did this with stacking. So like I mentioned, taking hundreds of thousands of them and kind of averaging them together.

So the goal would be to not have to do that and to actually image this directly with, say, the ASKAP data through EMU, and then also the polarized survey, which is POSSUM.

So I’ve been trying to kind of follow this up and figure out other ways that we can try and get at it until we can directly image this radio emissions.

So, you know, doing some more stacking of, say, individual clusters to look for the shockwaves at the outskirts of the clusters, as well as using a cross -correlation technique. So can we use information from other wavelengths like the X-ray sky and kind of correlate that with the radio sky to see if the emission kind of pops out if we know where to look based off the X-ray data.

So I’m always trying to kind of look at kind of fun new methods or another different angle to kind of attack things. When you’re working in order of magnitude or two below your survey. you have to get a little creative sometimes. So that’s kind of what I’m trying to get at right now.

Brendan: Fantastic. Great science is very creative. Now, we know that science also can give us a roller coaster ride sometimes. … And ASKAP is an example of a new generation of ultra -sensitive instruments. And the SKA, the square kilometer array, is now being constructed next door to ASKAP in a quiet radio zone in a very remote patch of the West Australian desert.

And meanwhile over in the Karoo Desert in South Africa, another SKA array is in construction. Now the SKA will absolutely be the most powerful telescope ever built, but at the same time, we’re putting tens of thousands of radio transmitters onto satellites and launching them into low Earth orbit, and they, I’ve heard, threatened to drown out some of these incredibly faint radio signals that you’re looking for, and RFI … radio frequency interference, has long been the enemy of radio astronomy.

What are your thoughts, Tessa, on the future of Earth-based radio astronomy?

Tessa: Well, these things like these mega constellations, like Starlink satellites and the like, certainly present a new challenge, something they maybe didn’t anticipate a few years back. So it found us, I think, to put a lot of pressure into those who deal more with policy to try to work with the companies that are putting those up into orbit.

So, you know, a lot of people think of Starlink interfering with optical images, and it does. But it also, since it’s, you know, broadcasting Wi-Fi, it also does very strongly affect radio astronomy.

So, you know, you can try to negotiate with them in terms of limiting what frequencies they might be sending out. And maybe, hopefully, someday we can negotiate maybe how many they’re putting up … things like that.

And then we can still try to come up with new methods and techniques to get this RFI out of our data. But that doesn’t totally solve the problem because you end up losing that data, but at least it’s not corrupting the data if it’s still there. And then who knows? There’s always been talk about trying to put some radio telescopes on the moon. So I’m not going to rule that out.

Brendan: I think that would be really cool. And I’m sure a lot of people would volunteered to go up and service it too, Tessa.

Tessa: Absolutely!

Brendan: Now, I see you have a long history of doing fabulous outreach work.

So many public talks, demonstrations, giving workshops, colloquia for your colleagues, and mentoring of students … and this interview could be an example.

Is outreach important for astrophysicists?

What’s next for you with outreach Tessa?

Tessa: Outreach is definitely really important, I think. We want the public to be informed about science and what we’re doing, but also excited about it.
So, getting the word out there and letting people know what we’re doing, but also encouraging younger generations.

And so getting out and speaking to younger school kids or high school kids … Things like that, people who might be thinking about maybe going into a career in STEM. So we definitely want to try to encourage that and help out however we can. I guess for what’s next for me … the next thing we have up is I’m on the organizing committee for a joint CSIRO ICRAR and SKA radio school.

So the school itself is designed for early graduate students or postdocs, to come together for a week and get kind of a crash course in radio astronomy.

So there’s lectures and then tutorials.

But also, this year we are hosting this in Geraldton, Western Australia. And we’ve organized several outreach events.
So we’ll be doing some public observing … bringing up some telescopes, hopefully if it’s clear, as well as kind of an Astronomy On Tap or Astronomy at the Pub type event, where we’ll have a lot of the astronomers there and the general public can come in and ask questions.

So if any of your listeners happen to be in Geraldton, in the first week of October, please keep an eye out for that, and you’re welcome to attend those public events.

Brendan: Fantastic. I have heard about the previous schools that you’ve been running for many years up at Narrabri. That’s a lovely place too. But it’s great to hear you working at Geraldton.

Fantastic. So get over there, listeners. Get to Geraldton.

Tessa: Thank you. That’s right.

Brendan: Okay. Now, just before I hand you the microphone, Tessa, along with your great science journey,

How do you balance that amazing research output that you’re doing with your personal life? It’s enormous workload.

What are the things that bring you great joy and help you unwind?

I know you went up to the dog park before. What’s those things that bring you great joy outside of your research?

Tessa: Yeah, mental health and work-life balance is very important … and it’s also very challenging. I know in academia especially, but probably many other fields as well. So it can be hard to kind of draw that balance.

I know in astronomy we have …  it’s very international field. So, you know, you’re getting meetings at 7 a .m. or sometimes, you know, I’ve given conference talks virtually at 11 p .m. my time.

And so you have to be a little flexible, but also draw these kind of boundaries. So, you know, I try not to work on the weekends at all if I can help it. And,

yeah, get outside as much as we can. So I mean, my husband and I like to go out hiking in the Perth Hills. Definitely usually go to the dog park every weekend. We have a great group of friends we meet up with for that … So I have two lovely corgis.

I like to travel when I can … I don’t get to do it as much for pleasure… I travel a lot for work, but I usually love to try and enjoy the different cities that I get to go to for these great conferences and things.

Yeah, I think just kind of relaxing at home with my family and my dogs and getting outside as much as I can.

Brendan: Fantastic, Tessa. Okay. Look, we’ve reached that point where I hand the microphone to you.

You’ve been answering the questions that I set up for you beautifully, but the microphone is all yours now, and you’ve got the opportunity to give us your favourite rant or rave about one of the challenges that we face in science, in equity, in representations of diversity, in science denialism, that’s one of my faves, or science career paths, or your own passion for research … or that huge human quest for new knowledge. The microphone is all yours, Tessa.

Tessa: That’s tough because you could probably have a good rant or rave about any one of those things.

I guess I feel fairly passionate about science denialism. We’re just got a kind of general denial ttitude towards science that seems to be increasing nowadays, which is worrisome.

So some people have this kind of anti-science mentality. There’s kind of a mistrust these days sometimes of scientists. And, you know, it definitely makes me sad to see that. So I think one of the things that ‘s on scientists … it’s we need to do a bit better, you know, communicating with the public as well.

And a lot is about education too, thoug … starting young and giving children proper science education, or overall, like, a kind of well-rounded education.

And I know in some places … some countries probably do that better than others. But I think that that’s just something that’s really important to keep an eye on and encouraging younger people to keep going into science.

To me … I think especially young women. I’m passionate about that. And I’d like to see as many as we can, climb the ranks.
And, of course, if anyone’s listening and you want some advice or if I can help in any way, feel free to contact me. Because, yeah, I do think that’s pretty important. And I don’t know what the exact answer is for combating this kind of anti-science mentality that’s going on.

But I do think that the science community should be aware of it and try to come up with some ideas on how to combat that.

Brendan: Yeah, we all need to keep our bit. Thank you, Tessa. And you mentioned keeping your eye on things. Is there anything else that we should watch out for in the near future? What are you keeping your eye on?

Tessa: I would definitely say that things are really kind of ramping up right now with the square kilometer array or the SKA Observatory.

So construction has started on that here in Australia and in South Africa. And it’s really going to be ramping up in the next few years. So anyone who actually is looking for a job in radio astronomy, they’ll be hiring a lot over the next few years. So that’s something to keep an eye out for.

Or anyone that might be listening who is in undergraduate studies right now, this would be the right time for you to go into astronomy because it’s going to be huge over the next decade.

So younger people would be the ones who are really going to get to take advantage of these great new facilities. And hopefully, in the more short term, keep an eye out for things from ASKAP.

So we like to try to advertise our discoveries with things like Conversation articles. So we tend to write those  … or press releases. And anytime we just find like a really cool, exciting new discovery, we’re going to be putting that out there. And we’re just constantly taking data with ASKAP.
So these kinds of discoveries could happen anytime.

Brendan: Fantastic. It is a beautiful instrument. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Tessa Vernstrom. On behalf of our listeners, and especially from me, it’s been really fabulous to be speaking with you.

And our listeners, don’t forget, jump on to that fantastic citizen science project, Radio Galaxy Zoo, Emu. and you just go to TinyurlDOTcom/myemu24 … that’s all lowercase all one word.

And good luck with your next travels.

Thank you so much, Tessa.

Tessa: Thank you so much for having me. And if anyone is listening and has any questions or wants to get in contact with me about any of this stuff, please feel free to reach out.

Brendan: Excellent. See you, Tessa. Thanks a lot.

Tessa: Thanks. Bye-bye.

Brendan: And remember, Astrophiz is free, no ads, and unsponsored. But we always recommend that you check out Dr Ian Musgrave’s Astroblogger website to find out what’s up in the night sky.

So we’ll see you in two weeks. Keep looking up.