Late last year I took over from Matt Owers as the "science lead" for the AAL/eROSITA collaboration, which manages the MOU between these two organisations with the goal of maximising opportunities for multi-wavelength astronomy projects across the southern sky. My first major task was to help with the organisation of the annual workshop, which was held virtually between 21—23 February

This workshop was a great opportunity to hear about the progress of the survey efforts by the team in Germany, as well as the various ongoing collaboration projects. There is plenty of synergy between the various radio and optical survey activities here in Australia, and we had some great talks on the resulting science. I also really enjoyed the format — we had a fairly relaxed schedule, and adopted Gather Town as the "base" environment (with breakouts to Zoom for presentations), to maximise opportunities for attendee interaction, motivated by advice from TFOM contributor (and committee member) Vanessa Moss.

As an X-ray astronomer who's worked for a long time to encourage more Australian activity in this area, it's really heartening to see this cooperation — even if up to now I've had little to do with it! If you missed the meeting many of the talks will be posted online shortly.

Labels: 2022, meetings