ADASS 2021

© Madroon Community Consultants

This week the world-wide conference on Astronomical Data Analysis Software Systems (ADASS) is held for the 31st year, this time in Cape Town, South Africa. Due to Covid, only 60 participants are physically there, while 300 others participate online in their various time-zones. The latter is a problem, of course, which is addressed with lots of technology and imagination. But we do look forward to the time when we can all meet in the same place again.

The picture shows our very own Oleg Smirnov launching the meeting, adopting a Leninist stance. He is now a professor in South Africa, and the leader of a highly respected software group. He co-chairs the meeting with Russ Taylor (sitting on the left), another old friend who used to be in Groningen and now heads IDIA in SA. Oleg stands in front of the famous MeerKat image of the Galactic Centre. Note the widely separated single-person tables, and the face-masks.

Thanks to the admirable MeerKat telescope, which is a SKA precursor, South Africa plays an increasingly important role in world-wide radio astronomy. The conference is teeming with enthousiastic Afican students, who greatly profit from this far-sighted science policy.