Martin Bell - I am Ph.D. student at the University of Southampton under the supervision of Prof. Rob Fender. I have been working at Astron with Prof. Ger de Bruyn on the search for highly dispersed, single event, transient radio bursts (Lorimer et al 2007) in archival low frequency Westorbork data. The motivation behind this project is to find new single-epoch high-energy burst events.
The Westerbork Low Frequency Front Ends lend themselves nicely to the task of searching for new pulses as they offer large bandwidth and good field of view. At the frequency regime at which they operate a new burst should be prominent enough to detect. My work has been to first learn how to calibrate and image WSRT data and then code a pipeline strategy for detection of pulses. I have also been involved in reducing follow-up 6 and 21cm WSRT data of an interesting transient event discovered in a low-frequency VLBI survey. I have gained a lot of knowledge from the experienced and helpful staff at Astron, especially my supervisor. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Astron and I would recommend the experience whole heartedly.


Ana Nicuesa - I come from Spain and this is the first year of my Ph.D. at the University of Vienna. This summer, I have been working with Raffaella Morganti and Eva Manthey on reducing HI synthesis observations of the Leo-ring taken with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope. A large intergalactic HI cloud in the Leo region was found by Schneider et al. (1983) and was called the Leo-ring. It is a very puzzling object. The most interesting part of this work has been trying to establish what the origin of this huge cloud is (it has the same mass of a dwarf galaxy!).
Apart from astronomy, Drenthe (the province where Astron is placed) is really nice. I enjoyed the opportunity to visit a different country for a longer time than a few days and be able to touch the real life of people. I can only say thank you for everything.


Parisa Noorishad - I’m originally Iranian and have just finished my M.Sc. in radio astronomy and space science at Chalmers, in Sweden. I will soon start my Ph.D. at the Groningen University, focusing on calibration and imaging techniques with phased arrays and particularly the EMBRACE demonstrator.
During my summer studentship I worked on a feasibility study of SETI with LOFAR, under the supervision of Mike Garrett. Here I would like to thank everybody at ASTRON and JIVE for the friendly and warm atmosphere they created and for welcoming us with many different activities.


Alfonso Trejo Cruz - Hola, I come from Mexico and I'm doing my Ph.D. in astronomy at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. My Ph.D. thesis focuses on the study of non-thermal radio sources in the Galactic Plane. I'm working under the supervision of Dr. Luis F. Rodriguez.
During the summer program at JIVE I have been working with Dr. Zsolt Paragi on two projects. One project is about the radio detection of a 2MASSX source, which was identified as the counterpart of a hard X-ray source. This X-ray source can also be related to a variable gamma-source. The goal of this project is to test the compactness of the 2MASSX source using short e-VLBI observations. The results show that the detected 2MASSX source is an eligible candidate for being the counterpart of the variable gamma source.
The second project is about the detection of the radio counterpart of the ultra-luminous X-ray source in the Triangulum galaxy (M33). We made short e-VLBI observations during the summer. With VLBI we can test the compactness of the source, which is important for sources related to black holes. In this exploratory project we used both normal phase-referencing and multi-source phase-referencing to calibrate the target.
The summer program is very good, and the ASTRON/JIVE staff is always willing to help. I thank Dr. Paragi for all the help and good discussions about interferometry with VLBI. It has been really nice to spend my summer in ASTRON/JIVE and have a chance to visit the Netherlands.


Zhiyu Zhang - Hello, I am a third-year MS. student from PMO (Purple Mountain Observatory), China. I am very proud to have had the opportunity to study interferometry and synthesis in radio astronomy here and work with the best astronomers in the world.
At ASTRON, my supervisors were Tom Oosterloo and Paolo Serra. My project here was to work on the 21cm HI data of an E/S0 galaxy, ESO 92-21, which was observed with ATCA (Australia Telescope Compact Array), and make some model datacubes to fit the gas kinematics. We also worked on getting its real rotation curve and comparing it with the result from MOND (Modified Newton Dynamics) models.
Dwingeloo is a very peaceful small town in the national forest park. Lectures, ASTROFEST, a tour of WSRT and LOFAR, made us learn many new things and gave us a good training on interferometry. It is really a wonderful experience, enriched by the possibility of discussing about astronomy dutring talks, colloquiums, etc.
During the ten weeks in ASTRON & JIVE, I have led a very healthy and happy life. Aside from astronomy, we have barbecue, bridge, football, softball, travelling, wadloping, cycling, etc. All of us summer students shared this happiness and friendship. Finally, many thanks to the committee and my supervisors, I would have never had this valuable and indelible experience without you.
P.S.: the guest house in ASTRON has a magic kitchen.