Editorial

Welcome to the June 2005 ATNF newsletter.

There was a wonderful response to our call for contributions for this newsletter – we were very pleased to be at the receiving end. We thank all the contributors several of whom also readily agreed to send in articles on request.

The cover article in this issue describes the spectacular outburst from a neutron star, the soft gamma-ray repeater SGR 1806-20 and the significant part played by the Compact Array in this "once-in-a-human-lifetime" event.

On page 18 Ravi Subrahmanyan reports on the innovative design and construction of a telescope for observing the epoch of re-ionization in the early universe. On page 4 Ilana Klamer reports on her discovery of massive amounts of molecular gas in the most distant radio galaxy, TN J0924-2201, the observation being a pointer to more such gas-rich radio galaxies. Read also about the recent Compact Array millimeter observations of central rings of dense molecular gas in a barred spiral galaxy by Tony Wong on page 8.

This issue also brings you a report on a new pulsar timing package by George Hobbs, ATNF outreach and meeting reports and reports from the Observatories. Not to mention the excitement of the "simple" telescope's big find on page 10 by Dave Brodrick.

We hope you enjoy the newsletter. We are always pleased to have your comments and suggestions. You can contact us at newsletter@atnf.csiro.au.

The newsletter is also available on the web at www.atnf.csiro.au/news/newsletter .

Lakshmi Saripalli, Jessica Chapman and Joanne Houldsworth
(Lakshmi.Saripalli@csiro.au, Jessica.Chapman@csiro.au and Joanne.Houldsworth@csiro.au
The ATNF News Production Team
(newsletter@atnf.csiro.au)