Dear Munira 2019 was the year the world finally woke up and did something to prevent the catastrophic destruction of our climate. It’s also the year you decided to fully commit to an academic career by starting your Master’s degree in Astr…
One of the most impactful discoveries in science over the past century is the discovery that the Earth’s climate is changing on a catastrophic scale due to the release of man-made greenhouse gasses. This topic has been on everyone’s mind recently, than…
South Africa is a very exciting place to do astronomy for many reasons. The most prominent reason? The MeerKAT telescope. In this post, I’m (finally) going to write about the most talked-about telescope on the African continent and why I’m so excited a…
Postgrad science students have a lot on our plates. Between labwork, presentations, keeping up to date with the latest publications, meeting with our supervisors and the dreaded thesis, we are busy people. We are, after all, trying to uncover how the u…
A factor that had the biggest impact on making my journey as a woman in a male-dominated field easier was the luck of having good mentors and role models. I have been fortunate in finding women who I could relate to and who believed in me, which helped…
There are two words that will upset most astronomers – ‘astrology’ and ‘aliens’. Although searching for extraterrestrial intelligence has embraced the scientific method in recent times, (Area 51 memes aside) and the consensus amongst historians …
I made it! I survived my first semester as a Masters student! I am exhausted, since the end of the semester consisted of too many assignments due in a very short amount of time, but I am very happy to never have to see a class test or tutorial question…
You must have seen the slightly blurry image of a black hole event horizon making the rounds on the internet in April. A bright, orange, cosmic doughnut. As an astronomer, this image was absolutely mind-blowing. In this post, I’ll share why this image …
I know what you are thinking – ‘I don’t have time for a hobby!”. And that might be true, which might be exactly the reason why you will benefit from a hobby. I have a few hobbies and I thought I would share why they help me, why they are especial…
