News

The past decade has seen leaps forward in both the scientific and technical expertise needed to conduct high resolution radio astronomy observations from space. Future detailed studies of compact celestial radio sources, related technologies and recent breakthroughs in the field are highlighted in a special issue of Advances in Space Research, entitled “High Resolution Space-Bourne Radio Astronomy”.

Radio astronomers have used a technique known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) to produce high resolution images of the most distant known blazar. The findings, reported in Nature Communications, cover the motion and emission of a jet originating from the heart of the blazar, to provide insights on how galaxies evolve.

Telescopes in the European VLBI Network (EVN) have observed a repeating Fast Radio Burst (FRB) in a spiral galaxy similar to our own. This FRB is the closest to Earth ever localised and was found in a radically different environment to previous studies. The discovery, once again, changes researchers’ assumptions on the origins of these mysterious extragalactic events.

In September 2017, during the IAU Symposium 336 "Astrophysical masers: Unlocking the mysteries of the Universe", reports surfaced of two water maser sources going "superburst". Maser Monitoring Organisation (M2O), a team of astronomers led by Ross Burns (a JIVE support scientist at the time), conducted a rapid follow up study to image the superburst in detail. Their findings clarify that the observed superburst was the result of a rare spatial alignment of two maser cloudlets.

Read more about science, technical and network highlights and check the newest call for proposals for the EVN!

The second edition of the ASTRON/JIVE “Traineeship in Science Operations with Massive Arrays” will soon be completed on 26 July 2019. The goal of the traineeship, which is sponsored by ASTRON and the JUMPING JIVE project, is to instruct young researchers in the operation of massive arrays as a preparation for next-generation astronomy facilities like the SKA. The course is 12 weeks long, of which the trainees spend one week at JIVE.

Astronomers have found the ‘smoking gun’ of an ‘orphan’ gamma-ray burst afterglow. Gamma-ray bursts are brief, intense flashes of gamma-rays that are difficult to detect. They are believed to be linked to cataclysmic events such as the collapse of a massive star, or the collision and merger of two neutron stars. Evidence of an ‘orphan’ gamma-ray burst afterglow provides astronomers with more possibilities to study, and ultimately understand, such phenomena.

Astronomers have just managed to take the first image of a black hole, and now the next challenge facing them is how to take even sharper images, so that Einstein's Theory of General Relativity can be tested.

Mark your calendars for the 29th annual conference on Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (http://adass.org). The conference will be held on 6-10 October 2019, hosted by ASTRON, JIVE, the ALMA European Regional Centre, University of Groningen, Universiteit Leiden, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Radboud University, and SRON.