News

We are pleased to announce that the Sixth European Radio Interferometry School (ERIS2015) will be held at ESO, Garching, Germany from September 6th – 10th, 2015. ERIS will provide 5 days of lectures and tutorials on how to obtain scientific results from radio interferometry at metre to sub-millimetre wavelengths. It is the sixth in a series of schools sponsored by RadioNet3.

The open call for e-MERLIN PATT observations during Cycle-3 is appended. Note that due to the clash with the ALMA cycle-3 proposal deadline and other commitments at this busy time we have extended the proposal deadline to 30th April 2015. Any questions regarding this call or e-MERLIN capabilities can be directed to e-merlin [at] jb [dot] man [dot] ac [dot] uk

For the first time, the Young European Radio Astronomers Conference'2015 will be held in Latvia. This will be an important event for the Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Centre (VIRAC), which celebrated 20 years of existence in 2014. Master and doctoral students in radio astronomy from across the world, as well as early stage postdocs, are invited to participate in one of the first truly international radio astronomy conferences.

e-MERLIN requests proposals from the international astronomical community for observations to be made during Cycle-3. Proposals are competitively peer-reviewed under standard STFC rules by the PATT e-MERLIN Time Allocation Committee. Deadline 15 April 2015.

Observations of the infant Universe have shown that the most distant galaxies discovered so far host black holes that are extremely massive, characterized by thousand of billions solar masses. These objects, known with the name of "quasars"; are generally discovered through the intense X-ray radiation they emit. The mechanism responsible for the formation of these black holes is still not known. To unveil this mystery and fully understand their origin and evolution, it would be necessary to detect their lower mass ancestors.

Results published by the Science journal on November 6, 2014 show a powerful flare of high-energy gamma-radiation from the galaxy IC 310 in the Perseus Cluster, at 260 million light years from earth. This flare was observed with the twin 17-m telescopes of the MAGIC telescope at La Palma/Canary Islands. Ancillary observations with the European VLBI Network - EVN, funded by the EU project RadioNet3, show a remarkable straight plasma jet emerging from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy, in a region smaller than a light year.

RadioNet3 provides financial support to workshops and conferences through WP3, the Science Working Group. To ensure proper allocation of the remaining fundings a Call for Proposals is being issued. Proposals are now accepted for meetings, conferences and workshops taking place in the period 1 January – 30 September 2015.

Overall the RadioNet3 project is in very good shape and it is quite impressive to see so many high-end deliverables coming out of this programme.

A study discards the possibility that the progenitor of the type Ia SN 2014J might have stemmed from the explosions of a white dwarf nourished by a normal star. Were these conclusions to become generalized, the use of type Ia supernovae “cosmological standard candles” might need to be revised.

Massive stars are responsible not only for some of the most spectacular phenomena in the Universe, but also for the production of heavy elements, key for the origin of life.