Today sees the launch, in Dublin, of a project to build a radio telescope in Ireland, "A Radio Telescope for Ireland" (ARTI). It is envisaged that this will have a 32-m diameter dish and participate in observations with both the EVN and MERLIN, as well as performing stand-alone observations.
The European Commission have just released a preliminary version of a document entitled "Changing the way research is done - The user perspective on e-Infrastructure". This includes a contribution from JIVE Director Mike Garrett describing the use of the GÉANT network for real-time VLBI.
During a recent (November 7) experiment, a single scan of Westerbork data was sent directly to JIVE via the Wb-JIVE optical-fibre, where it was recorded on a Mark5 unit. The same data were also recorded on tape at Westerbork. Last week the tape and disk data were correlated, giving good confidence that the remote recording was good. Final confirmation was achieved when the Westerbork disk was correlated with Effelsberg data - FRINGE! The data recording rate was 256Mb/s.
DANTE (the operators of GÉANT) have produced a video which describes the network and its capabilities, with specific reference to several scientific research projects that intend to utilise its high-speed (10Gbps) pan-European connectivity. Prominent amongst these is eVLBI, with Mike Garrett (the director of JIVE) interviewed.