Astronomers uncover white dwarf system emitting bright radio pulses with strange rhythm
Researchers identify a mystifying Long-Period Transient with 100% polarized radio emission, suggesting new type of cosmic radio source. A team of astronomers at ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, has discovered a mysterious new cosmic radio source that challenges current theories about how dead stars can produce such powerful emissions. Using the LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) radio telescope, the team picked up the unusual signal as part of a study led by astronomer Sanne Bloot. This research was published today in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Exoplanet Sparks Stellar Fireworks
Astronomers have witnessed a planet causing storms to erupt on its parent star, a discovery that could reshape our understanding of how planets and stars interact and evolve together. These findings are published today in the scientific journal Nature.
New ‘mini halo’ discovery deepens our understanding of how the early Universe was formed
Astronomers have uncovered a vast cloud of energetic particles – a ‘mini halo’ – surrounding one of the most distant galaxy clusters ever observed, using the LOFAR radio telescope, marking a major step forward in understanding the hidden forces that shape the cosmos.
An Earth-sized radio observatory just got better: South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope joins forces with the European VLBI Network of telescopes
South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope has successfully conducted very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations with telescopes of the European VLBI Network (EVN)—currently the world’s most sensitive VLBI network. Their synergy sets a new standard for global collaboration and significantly enhances both resolution and sensitivity, opening new avenues for scientific exploration.
Spinifex
© CC-BY 4.0 Maaijke Mevius, Tammo Jan Dijkema (ASTRON), Alec Thomson (SKAO/CSIRO)
We proudly present Spinifex, a new tool to calculate ionospheric Faraday rotation measures (RM) for radio astronomical purposes. This software is the result of a joint effort between Astron and CSIRO. It combines ionospheric models - mainly based on GNSS measurements - with those of the Earth's magnetic field.
Spinifex provides all functionality that used to be available in RMExtract, which was a combination of C, Fortran and Python. The new pure Python implementation is fully statically typed, which makes development and maintenance easier. In addition, Spinifex improves upon RMExtract on several other fronts such as the propagation of error bars from the GNSS data, easier integration with different data formats and new ionospheric models. Its modular design makes it easy to add more models, and current development of the code focuses on more advanced ionospheric implementations.
On the packaging side, the all-new repository is based on the ASTRON template for CI/CD (continuous integration / continuous deployment), with several enhancements. Tests in the repository run automatically every change, and the current test coverage currently is 84%. Pressing the release button on gitlab automatically deploys the package to pypi, so that users can just 'pip-install' the new version.
An initial comparison shows a good agreement between the model output and ASKAP measured rotation measures.
Documentation can be found at https://spinifex.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
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.