14th EVN Symposium and Users meeting

© 14th EVN Symposium and Users meeting

During the week from 8-11 of October 2018, the 14th EVN symposium and user meeting took place at the Parque de las Ciencias in Granada, Spain. More than 170 scientists participated in the conference with many representatives from both JIVE and ASTRON, making it an interesting and fruitful meeting. The scientific focus lay on observations with the European VLBI Network (EVN), but data from many other VLBI arrays (e.g. VLBA, KaVA, KVN, VERA, eMerlin, global VLBI) were also presented. The science discussed ranged from planetary atmosphere studies to Active Galactic Nuclei, from very weak sources like the radio counterpart of the gravitational event GW170817 to the maser super burst in G25 with flux densities above 20000 Jy.

Alongside a variety of talks, the EVN users meeting and the EVN vision meeting were held. In the users meeting, JIVE staff gave a summary of the status of the EVN and users provided feedback about the usability of the array. In the EVN vision meeting, the scientific future of the EVN was discussed.

In addition, a CASA-VLBI workshop, organized by JIVE, was offered at the end of the meeting, which gave participants the opportunity to get to grips with developments that enable VLBI analysis to be done using the CASA software programme.

On the social side, the local organizing committee set up a night visit to the stunning Nasrid Palace at the Alhambra as well as a trip to the IRAM 30m telescope, offering the perfect locations to catch up with old and new colleagues from across the VLBI network.