Ten new neutron stars for Terzan 5

Astronomers find and study multiple rare and unusual pulsars in dense stellar cluster using MeerKAT in South Africa and the U.S. Green Bank Telescope.

An international team led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory has discovered ten rapidly rotating neutron stars in the globular cluster Terzan 5. Many of them are in unusual and rare binaries, including a potential candidate for a record-breaking double neutron star, a pulsar in an extremely elliptical orbit, and several “spider” systems in which the neutron stars are evaporating their companions. These finds in data from the MeerKAT radio telescope array increase the number of known millisecond pulsars in this very dense stellar cluster by more than a quarter to a total of 49. The research team hopes to discover more pulsars in possibly even more extreme binaries: They plan to sift through all Terzan 5 data recorded with MeerKAT by using the massive computing power of the citizen science project Einstein@Home run at the MPI for Gravitational Physics.

Read more here.

Michiel van Haarlem new LOFAR ERIC Executive Director

The LOFAR ERIC Council has appointed Dr. Michiel van Haarlem as the new LOFAR ERIC Executive Director.

Dr. van Haarlem will play a crucial role in representing LOFAR ERIC to stakeholders, ensuring the efficient operation of the LOFAR facilities, and advancing the consortium's mission to coordinate the use of this vital radio astronomy instrument for world-class scientific research. Read more here.

Image: © LOFAR ERIC

JIVE´s Annual Report 2023

See here the Annual Report 2023 from Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC and have overview of JIVE activities over the past year, covering all dimensions of JIVE’s operations.

I-HOW: Open call for applications for IAU Workshops

The IAU calls for applications for workshops under the IAU Hands-On Workshops (I-HOW) initiative.

Motivation: Vast amounts of astronomical data are currently available in archives scattered around the world, for instance in the archives of telescopes run by big consortia, like ESO, NSF’s NOIRLab, NRAO, ALMA, ATCA, LOFAR, etc., or space missions developed by NASA and ESA, or by national space agencies like JAXA, ISRO, etc.

The I-HOW is an initiative to train young scientists in developing countries in accessing, analysing and using those data for their research projects.

The call for workshops in 2025-2026 has opened on the 15 June 2024.

Submission deadline: 31 August 2024

Read more here.

Image: © International Astronomical Union

100-m Effelsberg radio telescope: Open call for proposals

The call for proposals of the 100-m radio telescope (Effelsberg/DE) of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy is open.

Access/funding is offered through the ORP project.

Submission deadline: 26 September 2024 (15:00 UT)

Image: © N. Tacken (MPIfR)

Max Planck Society Call for APEX Proposals

The Max Planck Society call for APEX Proposals is open.

See the call here.

Deadline: 14 August 2024 (18:00 CEST).

Image: © ESO

European ALMA Regional Centre

The European ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) provides the interface between the ALMA project and the European science community. The ARC is staffed by scientists with expertise in radio astronomy and interferometry and it supports its users throughout the lifetime of a project, from proposal preparation to data analysis. Users that want to visit an ARC node for a face-to-face visit can apply for funding through the ORP project. 

Westerbork Apertif Long Term Archive

ALTA offers to the world-wide astronomical community free virtual access to data and scientific products produced from all sky surveys of the Northern sky that will be conducted with the new Apertif frontend of the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), as well as tools to query, further exploit and perform data mining of these products adaptable to diverse research goals. The access/funding offered through the ORP project.

LOFAR Long Term Archive

LTA is a long-established archive and access facility supporting the international LOFAR telescope. It is currently the largest radio astronomical archive in the world already exceeding 45 PB from LOFAR’s past 10 years of operations. The LTA provides a central and key resource for all observed LOFAR astronomical science programs where the data become public within 12 months of first creation. The access/funding is offered through the ORP project.