‘Beyond what we’d hoped’: international telescope in Australia captures first glimpse of the Universe
The first image from the international SKA Observatory’s telescope in Australia, SKA-Low, has been released – a significant milestone in its quest to reveal an unparalleled view of our Universe.
New Technology for Ultra-Fast Data Transfer: SURF and ASTRON Establish 400G Connection
SURF and ASTRON have implemented the OpenZR+ technology to establish a 400G network connection, significantly enhancing scientific research in the Netherlands.
Astronomers Astonished: Enigmatic Distant Radio Bursts Appear to be Neutron Stars
Using the radio telescope at Westerbork, The Netherlands, astronomers have discovered two dozen of the unexplained Fast Radio Bursts. After zooming in on the signal of the distant bursts, the astronomers found a striking similarity to the radio flashes emitted by nearby, known neutron stars. The discovery is remarkable because these nearby neutron stars already produce more energy than anything achievable on Earth. The distant stars that emit the Fast Radio Bursts must somehow generate an astounding one billion times more energy than the nearby ones.
European Pulsar Timing Array Wins Two Prestigious Awards
The European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA) has been honored with two major awards for its groundbreaking work in gravitational wave astronomy. In 2024, the team received the International Congress of Basic Sciences (ICBS) Frontiers of Science Award in China, followed by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) Group Achievement Award in the United Kingdom in 2025.These accolades celebrate the team’s innovative use of pulsar timing to detect low-frequency gravitational waves. The EPTA is a collaborative effort involving scientists from more than ten institutions across Europe. ASTRON is one of the participating organisations in this project with its most sensitive radio telescope including the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope. (WSRT).
Bouncing radio signals off the planet Venus
© Cees Bassa, Thomas Telkamp, Tammo Jan Dijkema on behalf of CAMRAS
On that date Venus was closest to Earth - still 42 million kilometers away - but close enough to try an unique experiment with the Dwingeloo Telescope; sending a radio signal towards Venus and trying to detect the reflected signal [1]. Since the signal takes 4 minutes and 40 seconds to travel to Venus and back, the Dwingeloo telescope sent a 4 minute, 38 second long signal to Venus and we then recorded data to listen for the reflection with both the Dwingeloo telescope and the Astropeiler Stockert telescope. We did this four times at 10 minute intervals.
The signal we transmitted was a simple tone (carrier wave) at 1299.5 MHz. Though this waveform doesn't allow us to measure the distance to Venus, it does have the useful property that the reflected signal will be contained in a small bandwidth (1-2 Hz), improving the probability of detecting the reflected signals.
This figure shows the combined result of the four recordings of the Dwingeloo and Astropeiler Stockert telescopes [2], where we correct the recorded signal for the predicted line-of-sight velocity (the Doppler frequency) and acceleration (Doppler drift rate) for each telescope to allow integration over the 4 minute 38 second recording and to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio.
The peak in the middle of the plot shows that we detect a ~10 sigma peak at the predicted Doppler frequency and Doppler drift rate, confirming that we detected the reflected signals transmitted by the Dwingeloo telescope.
This technique - using different transmitted waveforms - has been used since the 1960 by the Arecibo and Goldstone telescopes to map the surface of Venus with radar and determine that it rotates only once every 243 days.
[1]: https://www.camras.nl/en/blog/2025/first-venus-bounce-with-the-dwingeloo-telescope/
[2]: https://data.camras.nl/venus/
CASPER Workshop 2025
Mon 08 Sep 2025 - Fri 12 Sep 2025
The CASPER workshop is a semi-annual workshop where FPGA, GPU, and general heterogeneous system programmers get together to discuss new instruments in radio astronomy, as well as the tools and libraries for developing and manipulating these instruments.