Newsletter Issue 08/2020

Stay healthy and safe!

Coronavirus COVID-19

Operation of RadioNet and its infrastructures is recovering. However, most of the planned events are postponed until 2021 - see our calendar:

• 43rd COSPAR Scientific Assembly -> February 2, 2021

• 6th LOFAR Data Processing School -> March 22, 2021

• 6th Workshop on CSS and GPS -> May 12, 2021

• Compact Objects and Energetic Phenomena in the Multi-Messanger Era -> June 23, 2021

• 15th EVN Symposium -> July 12, 2021

New Director of the EHT Project

Prof. Huib van Langevelde, radio astronomer and former director of the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE), has been named Project Director of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a world-wide collaboration of more than 300 scientists publishing the first image of a Black Hole in 2019. Van Langevelde was an active member of many RadioNet projects. His appointment is for an initial term of 2 years, effective August 17, 2020.

The RadioNet coordinator Prof. Anton Zensus, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and Chairman of the EHT Board, comments that “Huib van Langevelde is ideally suited to move the EHT forward in pursuit of some of the most exciting and groundbreaking research in astronomy today". More information here.

EVN e-seminars series

The European VLBI Network (EVN) presents a series of 7 virtual seminars focused on contribution of the very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations to different astronomical fields. These seminars are oriented to the broad astronomical community.

The 2nd seminar will be given by Yuri Kovalev on VLBI as a key to the origin of high-energy neutrinos on September 4, 2020 at 2pm CEST. Full information about the webinars, which will be run using Zoom, can be found here.

OPTICON: Open call for observing time, supported by the EU H2020 Trans-National Access programme

OPTICON: Open call for observing time – TNA

The OPTICON call for observing time, supported by the EU H2020 Trans-National Access programme is now open. The call will close on August 31, 2020. The semester is centred on Feb 2021 to July 2021, but there are considerable variations at some telescopes to accommodate their normal semesters and to maximise scheduling flexibility. Please find detailed on special conditions here.

ESFRI workshop on the connection of ESFRI Research Infrastructures to the European Open Science Cloud, October 6-7 in Greece

2nd ESFRI RIs-EOSC Workshop

The next ESFRI workshop on the connection of ESFRI Research Infrastructures (RIs) to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) will be held on October 6-7, 2020 in Greece. It will be a physical event that will also be streamed online and recorded. The participation is by invitation only. The workshop will bring together ESFRI, ESFRI RIs and EOSC stakeholders to discuss the latest developments on the EOSC next phase governance and the technical areas. More details here.

Professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon President of the European Research Council on an interim basis

Prof. Jean-Pierre Bourguignon President of ERC

The European Commission has appointed Jean-Pierre Bourguignon as President of the European Research Council (ERC) on an interim basis. Professor Bourguignon will be in office from July 27, 2020 until the next ERC President is selected and takes up duties. The reappointment came in a crucial stage of the shaping of the Horizon Europe Work Programme. More here.

POLICY NEWS

Open consultation for the EOSC Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA)

The consultation will help to shape the SRIA, which provides general guidelines to help develop the work programmes for EOSC in Horizon Europe. The consultation takes the form of an online questionnaire where respondents can give their views on topics such as EOSC’s guiding principles, action areas and priorities. This includes information relating to rewarding Open Science practices and skills; standards, tools and services to find, access and reuse results; and shared and federated infrastructures to enable open sharing of scientific results. The consultation is open until August 31, 2020.

Agreement on a multiannual financial framework and a new set-up plan for the EU

The European Council agreed on July 21, 2020 on the next multiannual financial framework for 2021-2027 and on a plan for the new set-up of the European Union. Representatives of the 27 member states agreed in Brussels on a complete EU budget of 1820 billion EUR, 750 billion of it for the set-up of the „NextGenerationEU“ (NGEU), a new temporary financial instrument for coping with the consequences of COVID-19. More here.

ACCESS OPPORTUNITIES

RadioNet's Transnational Access programme ensures free of charge access to the best European radio astronomical research infrastructures. This opportunity is open to all European researchers and to some extent to researchers from non-EU countries. More

International LOFAR Telescope Regular Proposal Call

The International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) is a powerful next-generation radio telescope for frequencies below 240 MHz that offers revolutionary new observing capabilities thanks to its phased-array technology with digital beam-forming. Cycle 15 will run from December 1, 2020 - May 31, 2021. More information here.

Submission deadline: September 9, 2020.

Image © LOFAR

Call for Proposals on IRAM Telescopes

The Call for Proposals for the winter semester 2020/2021 is available here (pdf file). This document describes the proposal submission procedure. A detailed description of the observing capabilities of the 30m telescope and the current status of the NOEMA interferometer are given in separate documents. A submission of large programmes (more than 100 hours) is encouraged.

Submission deadline: September 10, 2020 (17:00 CEST)

Image © IRAM

Effelsberg Call for Proposal

The 100-m radio telescope of the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie and the data reduction facilities are available to all qualified scientists. The present policy allows the allocation of up to 40% of available observing time to external astronomers. The directors of the institute make observing time available to applicants based on the recommendations of the Program Committee for Effelsberg (PKE), which judges the scientific merit (and technical feasibility) of the observing proposals. More

Deadline: October 5, 2020 (15:00 UT)

Virtual Access to ALTA

The Westerbork Apertif Long Term Archive (ALTA) is a brand new facility offering 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.

JOB OPPORTUNITIES

ASTRON+JIVE - Postdoc position

ESO - Fllowship programme Europe 2020/21

IRAM - Deputy station manager IRAM -30m/Granada

Check also EURAXESS

UPCOMING EVENTS

supported by RadioNet

• New Trends in Radio Astronomy Instrumentation - Bonn/DE and virtual - September 21, 2020

• CASA-VLBI workshop – Dwingeloo/NL and/or virtual - November 2, 2020

• ADASS2020 – virtual - November 8, 2020

Links to these and to other related events are in our Calendar.

EDITORS:

RadioNet Management
Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie
Auf dem Hügel 69 // DE 53121 Bonn

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RadioNet has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730562, and contribution from the partner organisations