Professor Xiaohui Sun, from Yunnan University, visited Perth in August 2023, and Perth, Sydney and Canberra in January 2024, which was supported by the ACAMAR Visiting Fellowship. For the second trip, Xiaohui was accompanied by his two masters students Ms. Wenhui Jing and Mr. Shengtao Wang.
During his time in Australia, he had the opportunity to collaborate with his hosts regarding the study of cosmic magnetism using data from the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). The collaboration was strengthened, and more bilateral visits are expected in the near future.
CSIRO Perth: Masters student Shengtao Wang, co-supervised by George Heald and Xiaohui Sun, worked to make full use of ASKAP observations to produce the best continuum image of nearby galaxy NGC 253, with help from Stefan Duchesne. Attending the daily meetings on NGC 253, while Xiaohui was visiting Perth, and witnessing the improving image quality, was one of the highlights for Shengtao Wang. Xiaohui and Alec Thomson worked together to figure out how to best combine single-dish and interferometer data to reveal the true images of diffuse emission from the Milky Way Galaxy.
CSIRO Sydney: Masters student Wenhui Jing, co-supervised by Dr. Jennifer West (POSSUM project scientist, DRAO), Dr. Wasim Raja (CSIRO), associate Prof. Xianghua Li, and Prof. Xiaohui Sun, worked to reveal the nature of the SNR G310 (Jing discovered the radio shell). Many in-person discussions regarding this object led to a clearer picture of its nature. While in Sydney, Xiaohui also had discussions with Dr. Emil Lenc, examining polarization images of the Galactic diffuse emission.
Australian National University (ANU): POSSUM Busy Week. During POSSUM Busy Week, discussions were held with Jackie Ma, George Heald, Amit Seta, Xiaohui Sun and Shengtao Wang regarding the best way to proceed with the nearby galaxy science from ASKAP. Xiaohui made plots to check the leakage correction. The last time he made similar plots was 2019 – so he throughly enjoyed the process of using the POSSUM ASKAP data in this manner again during his time at ANU.
