The ESO-SKA 2024 conference “Cosmic Ecosystems in Optical and Radio” is being held this week in Busselton, WA. The conference brings together astronomers from optical/infra-red, far infra-red/sub-millimetre, radio, and theory domains, with the common interest of understanding the evolving role of gas in galaxies over cosmic time using ESO and SKA facilities.
Gas flowing into, out of, and around galaxies plays a key role in shaping how their properties evolve over cosmic time. The mechanisms driving these behaviors are poorly understood, largely because we lack detailed knowledge of fundamental gas properties across multiple scales and phases. Tackling these issues necessarily requires a multi-wavelength approach. Fortunately, the southern hemisphere hosts the most comprehensive suite of observational facilities available for tackling this topic, in the form of the ESO, ALMA, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) precursors (MWA, ASKAP and MeerKAT), and very soon, the SKA-Mid and SKA-Low telescopes.