First up, do you have a telescope?
No, I don’t. I don’t do optical astronomy, so stargazing isn’t something I am particularly interested in. A bit strange for an astronomer, I know!
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As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?
I was always interested in science and how the world worked. I decided that I wanted to be an astronomer at age 11, when the big newspaper in Cape Town began to print images from the Hubble Space Telescope on the front page. My father always saved the paper for me if there was a Hubble picture. I couldn’t believe that these beautiful pictures were used to do science.
Explain what you do in one easy paragraph.
I study star systems that consist of a black hole or neutron star and a normal star. These double stars emit different types of light, like X-rays and radio waves. I use telescopes on the ground and in space to look at this light. It can tell us about how these objects – as well as galaxies and even planets – form, change and grow.
What does a typical day involve?
First, I find out what is new with my Australian and US collaborators and catch up on the latest papers. Then, I get stuck into my research. I am working on two articles: one about a nearby galaxy and another about a black hole 50 million light years away.
What do you love most about what you do, and what’s the worst part?
I love working in teams and seeing how we all contribute to advancing scientific knowledge about the universe. The worst part is when I or my friends move away for work. This happens often in academia and you don’t always know when you’ll see your friends again.
Sum up your life in a one-sentence elevator pitch…
I’m living proof that, with the right support, even the most unlikely person can achieve something awesome.
If you could send a message back to yourself as a kid, what would you say?
It is going to seem hard at times, but you made a great career choice, so keep going.
What’s the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you?
I once told my PhD supervisor that I was “working smarter, not harder”. He told me that was a quote from the TV show DuckTales, said by Scrooge McDuck to his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie. He approved and it has been my motto ever since.
What’s the most exciting thing you are working on right now?
I have just been notified that I will be receiving data from a newly built radio telescope in South Africa, called MeerKAT. It is the best radio telescope in the southern hemisphere. I have been waiting for this moment since 2006. Now, MeerKAT and I are finally ready to start doing science together and it is going to be fantastic.
What’s the best thing you’ve read or seen in the past 12 months?
It has to be the image of the black hole event horizon taken by the Event Horizon Telescope.
“My father always saved me newspapers that printed images from the Hubble Space Telescope”
How useful will your skills be after the apocalypse?
It depends on the type of apocalypse. If we require technical skills, like making computers or other such systems, then I could be quite useful.
OK, one last thing: tell us something that will blow our minds…
In 1604, light from an exploding supernova 20,000 light years away reached Earth. It was visible during the day for weeks. Records from Korea, China, Arabia and Europe all mention this “new star”. I can’t imagine how cool it would be to look up in the daytime and see a new feature in the sky.
