European Radio Astronomy Consortium

Newsletter Issue 01/2025

WSRT: Enigmatic Distant Radio Bursts Appear to be Neutron Stars

Using the radio telescope at Westerbork astronomers have discovered two dozen of the unexplained Fast Radio Bursts. After zooming in on the signal of the distant bursts, the astronomers found a striking similarity to the radio flashes emitted by nearby, known neutron stars. The discovery is remarkable because these nearby neutron stars already produce more energy than anything achievable on Earth. The distant stars that emit the Fast Radio Bursts must somehow generate an astounding one billion times more energy than the nearby ones.

Scientific paper: Comprehensive analysis of the Apertif fast radio burst sample, (DOI).

See the ASTRON press release here.

Image: © van Leeuwen/ASTRON ; Highly detailed observations of two dozen Fast Radio Bursts discovered by the Westerbork telescope showed the flashes were likely emitted by young, magnetized and highly energetic neutron stars, as illustrated here

First-Ever Detection of a Mid-Infrared Flare in Sagittarius A*, the central source of the Milky Way

Using the MIRI instrument onboard of the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of scientists made the first-ever detection of a mid-IR flare from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive massive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. In simultaneous radio observations, the team found a radio counterpart of the flare lagging behind in time. The results are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters: First mid-infrared detection and modeling of a flare from Sgr A* (DOI). Read more.

Image: © CfA/Mel Weiss; Artist’s conception of the mid-IR flare in Sgr A* (left: beginning; center: middle; right: end), capturing the variability, or changing intensity, of the flare. The flare, which might be caused by magnetic reconnection, travels around the black hole while the electrons cool to lower energies causing the emission to become brighter at longer wavelengths relative to shorter wavelengths. If humans could see in the Mid-infrared, the flare would appear redder at the end of the flare than at the beginning.

Young Stars in the Milky Way’s Backyard Challenge Our Understanding of How They Form

Astronomers have made groundbreaking discoveries about young star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), along with observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

The study with the title JWST Mid-infrared Spectroscopy Resolves Gas, Dust, and Ice in Young Stellar Objects in the Large Magellanic Cloud is published in The Astrophysical Journal, gives new insight into the early stages of massive star formation outside our galaxy. Read more.

Image: © NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/S.Dagnello; An artist impression of young star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Massive and low-mass stars appear within nebulous gas within which they are born.

ALMA Uncover Surprising New Methods Planets May Form

A new study led by researchers at Lowell Observatory, combining data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and Keck Observatory, has unveiled intriguing findings about planet formation in this binary star system, known as DF Tau, along with other systems in this region.

See the results in the scientific paper Sites of Planet Formation in Binary Systems. II. Double the Disks in DF Tau (DOI).

World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

On 24 December 2024, AES Andes, a subsidiary of the US power company AES Corporation, submitted a project for a massive industrial complex for environmental impact assessment. This complex threatens the pristine skies above ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the darkest and clearest of any astronomical observatory in the world. Read more.

Image: © ESO/P. Horálek

The CTAO Becomes a European Research Infrastructure Consortium

On 7 January 2025, the European Commission established the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), furthering its mission to become the world’s largest and most powerful observatory for gamma-ray astronomy. Read more.

Image: © Gabriel Pérez Díaz, IAC

SKAO news:

Sweden signs SKAO Convention to join Observatory

Sweden will soon join the SKA Observatory as a member following the signing of the SKA Observatory Convention at an event at the Swedish Embassy in London on 21 January 2025. Read more.

New book: Discover the story behind the SKA

See here the book The Square Kilometre Array: A Science Mega-Project in the Making, 1990-2012 - by Richard Schilizzi & colleagues. The book chronicles the early days of this global collaboration.

A&A: new policy on paper length

Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) has decided to implement publication costs for papers exceeding a size limit, effective for papers submitted to A&A from 2 April 2025. Any authors wishing to exceed the page cap for their regular paper or Letter will need to pay a page charge that supports the additional costs associated with the longer format. Page charges will be tiered, reflecting the additional support already provided by sponsoring countries and subscribing institutions. Read more here.

POLICY NEWS

Newsletter Horizon Europe: Research Infrastructures

See here the new issue of the newsletter of the European Research Executive Agency (REA).

ESFRI Support for Brisbane statement from ICRI 2024

The ESFRI Chair and several ESFRI delegates attended the International Conference on Research Infrastructures (ICRI2024) held in Brisbane, Australia on 3-6 of December 2024. ESFRI underlines the Brisbane statement, one of the outputs that emerged from ICRI 2024. It contains several key messages that ESFRI supports and that resonate with some of our recent work. Read more.

ERA Forum Sub-Group "Inclusive Gender Equality in the ERA": Position Paper published

The Sub-group Inclusive Gender Equality in the European Research Area is an advisory body of the Commission’s expert group on the ERA Forum established to support the implementation of Action 5 “Promote Gender Equality and Foster Inclusiveness, Taking Note of the Ljubljana Declaration”.

The objective of the published position paper is to review the achievements of the ERA Policy Agenda 2022 – 20246, as embedded in the EU Pact for Research and Innovation and the Ljubljana Declaration for advancing European Research and Innovation, and to outline the vital elements for inclusive gender equality policy going forward to ERA Policy Agenda 2025 – 2027 and Framework Programme 10.

Republic of Korea to join Horizon Europe under Transitional Arrangement

As of 1 January 2025, the Republic of Korea joins Horizon Europe, opening new opportunities for researchers and unlocking potential for collaboration. Read more.

Commission facilitates the world’s largest and most powerful ground-based gamma-ray observatory, revolutionising our understanding of the universe

The European Commission established the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory European Research Infrastructures Consortium (CTAO ERIC). This Consortium will construct and operate the world's largest and most powerful ground-based gamma-ray observatory, making a significant milestone in global astro-particle physics. This pioneering facility, will revolutionise our understanding of the universe, driving groundbreaking science in the next decades. Read more.

ACCESS OPPORTUNITIES

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.

Submission deadline: 04 February 2025 (15:00 UT)

Image: © N. Tacken (MPIfR)

EVN Call for proposals open

The European VLBI Network Call for Proposals is now open. Find full information here.

submission deadline: 01 February 2025, 16:00 UTC

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.

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.