News

DWINGELOO, The Netherlands (25 June 2014) - Astronomers have discovered three closely orbiting supermassive black holes in a galaxy more than 4 billion light years away. This is the tightest trio of black holes known to date and is remarkable since most galaxies have just one at their centre (usually with a mass between 1 million to 10 billion times that of the Sun).

On 28 Februray 2014 Prof. Dr. H.J. van Langevelde, JIVE director, presented his lecture on galactic radio astonomy at the Leiden University. In the first part of his lecture he explains to the, mostly Dutch, audience his use of interstellar masers in the field of galactic radio astronomy. The second part of his lecture, in English, focussed on policy aspects.

Was Einstein right? The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded 14 Million Euros to a team of European astrophysicists to construct the first accurate image of a black hole. The team will test the predictions of current theories of gravity, including Einstein's theory of General Relativity. JIVE will collaborate in the implementation of this ‘Synergy Grant’, the largest and most competitive type of grant of the ERC.

The jets which are shot away into space by the supermassive black hole in the centre of a galaxy, clear gas away from the galaxy. The first clear evidence of this was obtained by a team led by Raffaella Morganti using the global VLBI array including the EVN. The results will be published in Science on the 6th of September.

Huib van Langevelde has been appointed professor in Galactic radio astronomy at Leiden University. As the director of the JIVE and as a recognized scientist, he plays an important role in the definition of new methods and facilities in the field of radio-astronomy.

The NEXPReS project successfully concluded on 30 June 2013, after three years of technology development for VLBI. The aim of NEXPReS was to eliminate the distinction between traditional disk-based VLBI and real-time e-VLBI, by incorporating elements of each into every observation by the EVN.

The "triggered e-VLBI" capability of the European VLBI Network has aided an extremely precise measurement of the distance to a star system. This has allowed astronomers to finally solve a decade-old puzzle, confirming our understanding of the way exotic objects like black holes swallow the material they rip off the surface of nearby binary companion stars.

JIVE and the EVN conduct a live e-VLBI demo at a launch event for the newly upgraded ORIENTplus link between Beijing and London.

On 19 March, the 32 meter radio telescope at Irbene, operated by Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Center (VIRAC), successfully participated in e-VLBI observations with the EVN.

The Planetary Radio Interferometry and Doppler Experiment (PRIDE) led by JIVE has been chosen by the ESA for the science suite of its flagship Jupiter icy moons explorer mission.