The European VLBI Network (EVN) continues its successful online seminar series, highlighting the power of VLBI in astronomy. In early 2025, talks explored innovative SETI approaches (Michael Garrett) and multi-messenger astronomy (Marica Branchesi), attracting over 100 live participants and 700+ YouTube views. This fall, two new seminars will take place: 6 November, 11:00 CET: Miguel [...]
September 16, 2025 — The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, with major contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), has unveiled new images of the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy M87. For the first time, the EHT detects faint emission from the base of M87’s relativistic jet, while multi-year [...]
The second Transnational Access (TNA) call of the ACME project is now open! This program supports research visits to European institutes offering training and expert guidance in multi-messenger astronomy — from gravitational waves and neutrinos to cosmic rays and photons across the electromagnetic spectrum. Who can apply? PhD students, postdocs, and staff scientists from universities [...]
The call for observing proposals with the European VLBI Network (EVN) is now open - non-expert teams are especially welcome! New: MeerKAT will be available for EVN observations on a best-effort basis starting session 1/2026. A tied-array beam and the local interferometer data may be requested. Proposals should clearly describe the added value of MeerKAT data to achieve the science goals [...]
The Max Planck Society has launched its Transatlantic Program to deepen collaboration with leading U.S. research institutions and strengthen opportunities for junior and senior scientists. Key elements of the program include: Opportunities for PhD candidates and postdocs through International Max Planck Research Schools (IMPRS), Max Planck Schools, graduate centers, and a new central postdoc program. [...]
An international team of astronomers has traced one of the brightest one-off fast radio bursts (FRBs) ever observed - FRB 20250316A - to a galaxy 130 million light-years away. Using the Canadian CHIME radio telescope and its newly completed outrigger stations, the team localized the burst to a region just 45 light-years wide, the most [...]
For the first time, astronomers have directly tracked the transformation of a dying star over more than a century - revealing that it is heating up faster than any other typical star ever observed. The study, led by Professor Albert Zijlstra (The University of Manchester) and published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, examines 130 years [...]
Astronomers using ALMA have discovered a vast bubble of gas and dust surrounding the red supergiant star DFK 52 — the largest structure of its kind ever seen in the Milky Way. Containing as much mass as the Sun and stretching 1.4 light years across, the bubble was created by a dramatic stellar eruption about [...]
The 21 CentiMeter Array (21CMA), located in China’s Tianshan Mountains, has been officially recognised as an SKA pathfinder telescope by the SKA Observatory. Originally built in 2004–2006 and recently upgraded, 21CMA operates at 50–200 MHz, overlapping with the frequency range of SKA-Low. The array has collected over 3,000 terabytes of data and developed new digital [...]
Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) may have caught a planet in the act of forming around the young star HD 135344B, about 440 light-years away. The planet candidate, estimated at twice Jupiter’s size, appears to be shaping striking spiral arms in the star’s protoplanetary disc - the first direct detection of its kind. [...]