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NEWS

ASTRON has turned 75!

75 years ago today, SRZM (Stichting Radiostraling van Zon en Melkweg/Netherlands Foundation for Radio Astronomy) was founded. This organization would later become ASTRON.

News
Published by the editorial team, 23 April 2024

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
EVENTS

Toegepaste RF-techniek

Mon 13 May 2024 - Thu 16 May 2024

De cursus Toegepaste RF-techniek bestaat uit een theoriegedeelte (75%) en hands-on sessies in ons eigen lab (25%).
Deelnemers aan deze cursus dienen een hbo werk- en denkniveau te hebben. De deelnemer kent de basisbegrippen van elektronica. Parate kennis van wiskundige concepten is niet vereist, maar komt wel aan de orde bij de transmissielijntheorie. In de cursus wordt ook complexe rekenwijze toegepast.

DAILY IMAGE
Colloquium: The first inroads into the low-frequency gravitational wave spectrum

© Credit: Daniëlle Futselaar / MPIfR (artsource.nl)

Supermassive black holes at the centres of merging galaxies are expected to form binary systems whose orbital motion generates gravitational waves. A cosmological population of such systems combine to build up a gravitational wave background (GWB). A significant detection of this GWB will provide the first stringent constraints on the dynamical evolution of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies while also providing a tantalising probe into the properties of the early Universe. Searches for the GWB have typically used sensitive radio telescopes around the world which observe an ensemble of extremely stable millisecond pulsars to probe the characteristics of the GWB signal. In this talk, I will discuss the first compelling evidence of the GWB seen by global pulsar timing array (PTA) collaborations, its scientific impact, potential biases and the road ahead. I will also talk about my new PTA group at ASTRON which aims to combine radio and gamma-ray pulsar data sets to improve our understanding of the interstellar medium and the astrophysical origins of the GWB.

@astron

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