All sky, all the time – A new radio sky monitor for transients and technosignatures
Breakthrough Listen, headquartered at the University of Oxford – the most ambitious project to date searching for technosignatures (signs of technology as an indicator of extraterrestrial intelligence) – is partnering with ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, and the University of Manchester, to deploy a new all-sky monitor at the Westerbork Observatory in the Netherlands. The new experiment takes phased array feeds (PAFs) – essentially wide-field radio cameras – that were previously deployed on the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), and installs them on the ground, looking up at the sky directly.
Sweden and the United Kingdom Join the LOFAR ERIC
Sweden and the United Kingdom have joined the LOFAR ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) as a member, following the decision of the Council on 26 March 2025. This significant expansion brings the total membership to eight countries, marking an important milestone in the growth of this pioneering research infrastructure.
ASTRON receives €4.6 million to widen and sharpen LOFAR’s cosmic vision
The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded over €4.6 million to ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, for a major upgrade to the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope. The project, called LOFAR Enhanced Network for Sharp Surveys (LENSS), will significantly increase LOFAR’s observational capabilities, enabling astronomers to view four times more of the sky simultaneously while producing images with unprecedented clarity.
Invisible jets from tiny black holes sculpt the Galaxy
Black holes, even relatively small ones, leave dramatic “footprints” in space that extend far beyond their immediate vicinity—like ripples from a pebble dropped in a pond. New research using the MeerKAT radio telescope reveals that stellar-mass black holes (those formed from collapsed stars) shoot powerful jets of energy creating massive shockwaves, effectively carving out space and influencing their galactic neighbourhoods over thousands of years. The discoveries show smaller black holes play a much more significant role in shaping galaxies than previously thought. These findings are published today in two studies featured in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
LOFAR2 transient buffer: First dump!
© ASTRON
After several months of effort, we have this chain of events now working for the first time on a real Uniboard2. The photo on the left shows the DDR4 memory chips as they are mounted at the bottom of all UniBoard2s in LOFAR2. The screenshot shown at the right shows the first recording and subsequent dumping of 14 packets of antenna data. The monitor points, shown as well, report that the dumped data has the correct checksum (CRC) and correct timestamp (RSN). We used the test rack in the digital lab for this test.
This test shows that the core functionality of the transient buffer function on UniBoard2 works. This test used one FPGA on a UniBoard2, only. The next implementation step is to dump data from all FPGAs in a LOFAR2 subrack.
CASPER Workshop 2025
Mon 08 Sep 2025 - Fri 12 Sep 2025
The CASPER workshop is a semi-annual workshop where FPGA, GPU, and general heterogeneous system programmers get together to discuss new instruments in radio astronomy, as well as the tools and libraries for developing and manipulating these instruments.