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NEWS

ASTRON launches database of female experts

Today marks International Women’s Day. This year’s theme is ‘Inspire Inclusion’.

News
Published by the editorial team, 8 March 2024

LOFAR ERIC: Distributed Research Infrastructure for European Astronomical Research Launched

LOFAR ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) has been officially launched at its first Council meeting today. The world-leading LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) Distributed Research Infrastructure has already revolutionised low-frequency radio astronomy research, resulting in an avalanche of scientific publications in the past decade. LOFAR ERIC is now a single legal entity across the European Union. The LOFAR ERIC statutory seat is in Dwingeloo, the Netherlands, hosted by NWO-I/ASTRON (Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy; the original designer of LOFAR).

LOFAR
News
Published by the editorial team, 22 January 2024

Telescope quartet reveals surprising statistics of cosmic flashes

Scientists led by Chalmers astronomer Franz Kirsten have studied a famous source of repeating fast radio bursts – a still unexplained cosmic phenomenon. Comparing with earlier measurements, the scientists draw a conclusion with far-reaching consequences: any source of fast radio bursts will repeat, if watched long enough and carefully enough. The research team, a unique collaboration between professional and amateur radio astronomers, used four telescopes in northern Europe, amongst which ASTRON’s Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope.

Astronomy
News
telescopes
WSRT-APERTIF
Published by the editorial team, 4 January 2024

Dutch astronomers prove last piece of gas feedback-feeding loop of black hole

Three astronomers from the Netherlands have proven that gas that was previously heated near a supermassive black hole and flowed to the outskirts of the galaxy and cooled down, is moving back towards the black hole. While there had been indirect evidence for this theory, this is the first time that the cooled gas moving toward the black hole has actually been observed.

Astronomy
News
Published by the editorial team, 7 December 2023

Super sharp images reveal a possible hypernebula powered by a source of fast radio bursts

A team led by astronomers in the Netherlands have confirmed a repeating FRB source to be linked to a potential ‘hypernebula’ – a dense and highly magnetised cloud of plasma that is illuminated by a powerful but still mysterious source.

Astronomy
News
Published by the editorial team, 30 November 2023

Astronomers discover ultra-fast radio bursts in archived data

An international team of researchers led by Dutch Ph.D. candidate Mark Snelders has discovered radio pulses that last only millionths of a second.

Astronomy
News
Science
Published by the editorial team, 20 October 2023
EVENTS

7th LOFAR Data School

Mon 15 Apr 2024 - Fri 19 Apr 2024

Dear LOFAR Users, We are happy to announce that the 7th LOFAR Data School (LDS2024) will take place at ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (The Netherlands) in the week of 15-19 April, 2024. Rationale The goal of the school is to assist the participants in the generation and analysis of LOFAR science ready […]

DAILY IMAGE
SKA-LOW Operator Visits ASTRON: Take 2

© Charlotte Sobey / Ronald Schrik

G'day, I'm Charlotte Sobey. I am currently working as a 'SKA-Low Telescope Operator & Data Analyst' in the SKA Observatory's Australian Science Operations Centre, Perth. I visited ASTRON from 4-15 March, following Riley Keel's visit.

This image shows just a snapshot of some of the activities during the fortnight: from visiting the LOFAR core and replacing an HBA board (left); to riding the cherry picker up to the focus of the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) Dish 0 to see the Multi Frequency Front End receiver (top right).

I would like to thank everyone in Telescope Operations (TO), Science Data Centre Operations (SDCO), and the Science Groups for their hospitality, enthusiasm, and willingness to share their knowledge. It was great to see many of my previous colleagues again (I was a postdoc at ASTRON from 2013-2016), and meet a lot of new colleagues. I learnt a great deal from the visit, which I look forward to feeding into SKA developments and SKA-Low Science Operations.

In particular, I would like to sincerely thank Marco Drost, Bernard Asabere, Henk Mulder, Jurjen Sluman, Leysan Mulder, Lute van de Bult, Menno Norden, Peter Gruppen, Richard Blaauw, Ronald Schrik, Yvonne Dijk, and Zabet Ahmadi for sharing your time and expertise.

I look forward to collaborating with you going forward and sharing our experiences between SKA and LOFAR2.0 developments.

@astron

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