SKA mid-day sessions at SEA2026

[Lourdes Verdes-Montenegro]

Hola a todos,

At the SEA Scientific Meeting next week, we will be holding two midday sessions on the SKA on Tuesday 14th and Wednesday 15th.  

The main aim is to share SKA updates and facilitate further interactions and collaborations within the Spanish community. These sessions will provide a practical, forward-looking understanding of how to engage with the SKAO during its upcoming phases. The sessions are aimed not only at radio astronomers, but also at the wider astronomical community interested in scientific opportunities, collaboration networks and Spain's growing role within the SKA ecosystem.

Both sessions will take place from 13:35 to 14:20 (45 min, so be on time!) and will cover topics as the SKAO timeline, the Science Verification and the SKA tools. We will also introduce the Spanish Focus Groups on SKA science and share opportunities for collaboration (e.g. Galactic Center and SKA-VLBI on Tuesday and Extragalactic continuum and polarisation and Cosmology on Wednesday).

We encourage you to attend these sessions, as the SKA Observatory is in an advanced state of construction and Science Verification for SKA-Low is planned to start in 2027. This will be the first opportunity for the community to access real SKA data, assess its quality first-hand, and contribute to early science results.

As several of you have expressed an interest in attending, we kindly ask you to fill in this Google form so that we can estimate attendance numbers:

https://forms.gle/Tp5vjxQMbHufv7HHA

Please note that food is not permitted in the meeting rooms.

We look forward to seeing you next week.

Lourdes Verdes-Montenegro

Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-CSIC

Coordinator of SKA-España