The SKA Observatory has released Advancing Astrophysics II, a new collection showcasing the broad range of science that will be enabled by the SKA telescopes. The anthology brings together 221 peer-reviewed papers from more than 1,500 scientists in 51 countries, covering topics from the Sun, planets and star formation to galaxies, cosmology and the extreme [...]
ALMA has captured a vast stream of gas feeding the young triple-star system GW Orionis, located about 1,300 light-years away. Stretching roughly 12,000 astronomical units (0.2 light-years), the streamer connects the surrounding molecular cloud with the system’s unusual, misaligned planet-forming rings. The observations provide strong evidence that late infall of material from a star’s natal [...]
The European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) has published a new position paper calling for the protection of radio astronomy in the future regulatory framework for the 6425–7125 MHz frequency band. The paper urges the Radio Spectrum Committee to ensure that the needs of European radio astronomy research infrastructures are considered, safeguarding their ability [...]
France has officially become the 14th member state of the SKA Observatory (SKAO), marking a major milestone for the world's largest radio astronomy project. The accession strengthens the Observatory's international partnership and reflects France's long-standing commitment to SKA through scientific expertise, advanced computing, and industrial contributions. French institutions play leading roles in SKA science, exascale [...]
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the NSF National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) have announced a partnership to develop a pathfinder for the proposed Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA). The new instrument will advance very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) technologies, enabling ultra-high-resolution radio observations for both astrophysics and [...]
An international team led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) has discovered a nearby galaxy whose central black hole is undergoing an extraordinary, long-lasting radio outburst unlike anything previously observed. Although located just 1.8 billion light-years away, the rapidly growing, low-mass black hole exhibits properties expected for black holes in [...]
Using ALMA, astronomers uncovered "Shadow Blaster" - a compact, dust-obscured starburst galaxy located within the localization region of the IceCube neutrino event IC 210922A. Thanks to gravitational lensing, researchers revealed an intense, gas-rich core where extreme star formation could generate the conditions needed to produce high-energy neutrinos. While the association is not yet confirmed, the [...]
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have uncovered a huge reservoir of cold molecular gas in the distant galaxy REBELS-25, seen just 700 million years after the Big Bang (z = 7.31). The observations reveal around 100 billion solar masses of star-forming fuel, making [...]
The NSF National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) prototype antenna has achieved “first light,” successfully conducting its first astronomical observations independently and together with the NSF Very Large Array in New Mexico. This milestone marks the transition from construction to scientific testing for the prototype, which is validating the [...]
An international team led by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) has observed unusual flickering in the pulsar PSR B1508+55, revealing structured, filament-like gas in the interstellar medium about 430 light-years from Earth. Using the Effelsberg radio telescope in Germany and FAST in China, the researchers found that the pulsar’s signal is stretched [...]