ASTRON’s head of the Innovation & Systems department, Roelien Attema, has been named as one of the ten new Fellows of the Netherlands Academy of Engineering (NAE). The appointment recognises her outstanding achievements in technology valorisation and visionary leadership in research and development.

What happens after neutron stars merge? Dr. Antonia Rowlinson has received an ERC Consolidator Grant to find an answer to that fundamental question.

August 31st was the last day on which we received data from LOFAR1. With the shutdown of LOFAR1 operations, over a decade of gathering and handling huge amounts of data came to an end. LOFAR1 operations have led to the publication of more than 750 scientific papers so far, and this number is still growing by about two papers per week. The end of LOFAR1 production operations does of course not mean the end of LOFAR (which became LOFAR ERIC last year): right now we are working hard on upgrading the LOFAR telescope to version 2.0, both in software and hardware.

Astronomers have spotted the biggest pair of black hole jets ever seen, spanning 23 million light-years in total length. That’s equivalent to lining up 140 Milky Way galaxies back to back.