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Where to place the MFAA environmental prototypes?
© SKA RSA / Richard Lord The previous daily images (17-06-2013 , 09-09-2013 and 10-03-2014 ) showed the four environmental prototypes inside the WSRT bouwhal, the anchor test performed at the South...
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The Lessons of History
© Madroon Community Consultants (MCC) Last week, our institutes were visited by Dr David Baneke (*), who is writing a "History of the Dutch Astronomical Community, starting with Kapteyn (~1900)". This...
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The hardware for APERTIF ALPHA-3 is coming in
© ASTRON, 2014. As reported before, the APERTIF focal-plane array project is preparing a demonstrator involving three WSRT dishes (ALPHA-3). After an EU public procurement process, the hardware...
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Today's Colloquium: Science with the Murchison Widefield Array
© Lister Staveley-Smith Abstract: The Murchison Widefield Array is the first operational SKA precursor telescope, having begun operations in August 2013. I will summarise the science goals of the...
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The Low Noise Tile: First array results
© ASTRON In our series of daily images (18-12-2013 and 21-02-2014) on the progress of the Low Noise Tile (LNT) project, today's image shows the results for a small 2x2-element array with the new LNT...
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Stargazing event organized by the PV
© ASTRON / A. van Duin On Wednesday 5th of March, the ASTRON/JIVE employees club (PV) organised a star-gazing event for (retired) employees and their families. Since the celebration of the Landelijke...
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Discovery of a Super-Powered Black Hole in the Nearby Galaxy M83
© Leith Godfrey - ASTRON. Image Credits: M83 - NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (WFC3/UVIS, STScI-PRC14-04a). MQ1 inset - W. P. Blair (Johns Hopkins University) & R. Soria (ICRAR-Curtin). In...
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Arctic storm damage at KAIRA
© Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory On the night of 8th March 2014, the Kilpisjärvi Atmospheric Imaging Receiver Array (KAIRA) was hit by a ferocious Arctic storm from the northwest. The two nearest...
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Today's Colloquium: The ALFALFA Census of Gas-Bearing Galaxies at z=0
© Martha Haynes (Cornell University) Capitalizing on the huge collecting area of the Arecibo telescope and the survey capability of the 7-beam Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA), the Arecibo Legacy Fast...
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New EVN baselines
© SpaSIA group of JIVE, V. Tudose (Space Science Institute, Romania), W. Wang (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, China), Y. Yonekura and K. Fujisawa (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan), M....
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SKA MFAA All-Hands
© SKAO On Thursday 8th November 2013 the SKA Aperture Array MID (AAMID) consortium conducted it's kick-off. This marked the start of a three year (pre-construction) phase leading up to the Preliminary...
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Another "amateur" image: Messier 81
© astropix.nl Messier 81 was first discovered as a "nebulous patch" by Johann Elert Bode in 1774, hence its alternative name "Bode's Galaxy". In 1779, Pierre Mechain and Charles Messier rediscovered...
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UniBoard in combination with the UniServer
© Vereese van Tonder During the past month one of the UniBoard's, in combination with the UniServer, was used to simulate the response of a linear antenna array to an incoming plane wave. The aim was...
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MFAA environmental prototypes realized!
© Photowise / Sarel van Standen Last week, an ASTRON team realized the MFAA environmental prototypes on the SKA Karoo site! We enjoyed a very hot and dusty week, but were lucky enough to run into some...
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Today's Colloquium: Waterfalls, fountains and water bombs: infall, outflows...
© Ruud Visser Water is a unique probe of gas motion in protostellar environments, allowing us to trace kinematics in star forming regions from cloud to the inner envelope (< 1000 AU) scales. With...
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Joe Taylor is Back!
© Harm Jan Stiepel Exactly twenty years ago, Prof Joe Taylor was slated to visit the Netherlands to pick up an award in the wake of his Nobel Prize(*). On a whim, our enterprising colloquium...
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Almost invisible heroes
© ASTRON, 2014. Invisible to the crowd in Dwingeloo, a team of hard workers is upgrading two WSRT dishes (in the winter season!!) for the APERTIF ALPHA-3 system. The upgrade of a WSRT dish to APERTIF...
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Dwingeloo Telescope re-opened
© Harm Jan Stiepel Last saturday, 5 april 2014, the recently refurbished Dwingeloo radio telescope was officially re-opened. It is now a National Monument in the care of CAMRAS. In 1956, when it was...
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Shipping UniRacks for AAVS
© DESP / ASTRON The image shows Sjouke Zwier shipping a UniRack (rack of UniBoards) to the University of Cambridge (UK). By the time of publication of this daily image another rack will have been sent...
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ASTRON extends LOFAR telescope with new antenna station near Hamburg
© ASTRONASTRON, university of Hamburg and Bielefeld University sign contract for new German LOFAR antenna stationOn Wednesday 9 April at the Hannover Messe (the world's most important industrial fair),...
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