News

Event Horizon Telescope Images of a Black-Hole Powered Jet

Following the recommendations of the Dutch authorities, the ASTRON premises in Dwingeloo, which host JIVE, are closed until at least 20 May.

The AstroFlash project will use the European VLBI Network to precisely localise the positions of Fast Radio Bursts.

Observations using 21 telescopes of the European VLBI Network (EVN) have revealed that a cosmic explosion, called AT2018cow most likely formed a neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field - known as a magnetar.

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!