ASTRON celebrates its 75th birthday!

© ASTRON/Studio Eigen Merk

On 23 April 1949 - 75 years ago -, the precursor to ASTRON, known as SRZM (Netherlands Foundation for Radio Astronomy), was established officially. Prof. Jan Oort served as the chair of the Board from its inception until his retirement in 1970. SRZM was established to lay the groundwork for creating, building, and managing the Dwingeloo Telescope.

Since then, ASTRON has dedicated its 75 years of existence to making discoveries in radio astronomy happen. We're proud of:

- 75 years of astronomical discoveries like the Hydrogen line, Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), dark matter, pulsars and much more;

- 75 years of technological innovations like phased array feed technology, supercomputers and correlators to crunch all our observation data, a computer board that can process one petabit of data per second and much more;

- 75 years of collaboration and innovation between engineers, astronomers and business support staff to push the boundaries of knowledge;

- 75 years of building innovative telescopes: the Dwingeloo Telescope, Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) and Low Frequency Array (LOFAR);

- 75 years of collaborating with partner institutes to build groundbreaking instruments for radio astronomy, like the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT);

- 75 years of inspiring (new) students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM);

- 75 years of collaborating with (regional) industry and government to make our knowledge accessible;

- 75 years of working in a national park, one of the most beautiful office environments one could wish for.

It has been 75 years of imagining the impossible, and then together making those dreams come true. We are grateful to all the people who have helped us to make discoveries in radio astronomy happen; past, present, and future.

We are part of science, we are part of nature, we are part of the community we work in. We are ASTRON, be part of us.