ASTRON

We are happy to share the following news on behalf of LOFAR ERIC The LOFAR ERIC Council has appointed Dr. Michiel van Haarlem as the new Executive Director of the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (#ERIC), established by the European Commission in December 2023. Dr. Van Haarlem will play a crucial role in representing LOFAR ERIC to stakeholders, ensuring the efficient operation of the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) facilities, and advancing the consortium's mission to coordinate the use of this vital radio astronomy instrument for world-class scientific research. For more information visit the LOFAR ERIC website.

Yesterday marked International Women in Engineering Day. We at ASTRON are very proud of our women engineers. Two of those are Ágnes Mika and Paula Fusiara. Agnes Mika is project manager at ASTRON and competence group leader for the COMPAS group (a team of systems engineering and project management professionals). You can find out more about her here. Paula Fusiara is a mechanical engineer. “My partner said: ‘Do not look for a job because you have to work; look for a job that you would love to do.’” And that is how Fusiara eventually ended up at ASTRON. #INWED2024

This week is something else... I'm in Yokohama, Japan, participating in the #SPIE with ASTRON together with some of my great colleagues and #NLSpace. It's impressive to see the full scale of astronomy initiatives in the world and downright cool to have Jessica Dempsey as a keynote speaker on the subject of sustainable science, amongst #NASA, #ESA, and other keynotes. This afternoon Robbie Luijben will do his presentation on our new proposal tool and writing robust and maintainable code, I'm looking forward to that!

This year, summer solstice on the Northern hemisphere falls on 20 June. It is the day with the longest period of daylight and therefore a day on which you have less time with optical telescopes to gaze at the stars. But did you know that radio telescopes have no such limitation? They can look at the skies 24 hours a day, observing radio waves that have traveled for up to billions of light years before reaching Earth. But how are these radio waves - a form of light invisible to the human eye - converted into a picture that we can see? Find out here:

We are very happy to be present at the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes Instrumentation event, currently taking place in Yokohama, Japan. Together with our other Dutch partners we can be found at the NL Space Campus Pavilion, booth 402. Should you have the opportunity, be sure to visit us and see Dutch astronomy engineering at its finest! #SPIEastro

NL Space is well represented at the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes & Instrumentation conference 2024 in Yokohama, Japan, from June 16-21. Come and meet us at the NL Pavilion (booth #402) where we present the long heritage and broad expertise of the Netherlands on astronomical instrumentation. We are looking forward to expand our international collaborations and innovation to the next generation of both ground-based and space-based observatories! ASTRON - cosine meetsystemen - Demcon - Dutch United Instruments - JPE - Driven by innovation - NOVA Netherlands Research School for Astronomy - SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research - TNO - TU Delft - VDL Groep - Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (RVO) - NSO - Netherlands Space Office - Netherlands - Mihoko Ishii - SpaceNed #spieastro #dutchspacesector #nlspace

Non-repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) probably originate from galaxies similar to our Milky Way. This is wat an international team of astronomers suspects based on their findings. The researchers, including Ziggy Pleunis (UvA and ASTRON), publish their results in The Astrophysical Journal today. https://lnkd.in/e5ctRzkn

What is the biggest challenge Jessica Dempsey is tackling at ASTRON? "We need to navigate the upcoming radio-astronomy renaissance: how do we keep up with the data needs of these huge but incredible observatories, and how do we balance the resource requirements with the needs of both our science community and our societal obligations?" Read about the road ahead that Prof. Dempsey will address during her plenary at the SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics conference on https://lnkd.in/eqwhUQpM #astronomy #sustainability #science #radioastronomy #telescopes #sustainableastronomy #society #scienceandsociety #bigdata

How can energy-efficient, brain-inspired computing play a role in radio astronomy? 🧠 Radio astronomy is a relatively new area of science that relies heavily on the abundant availability of data- and compute-capacity. Since future telescopes will generate vast amounts of data, they pose significant challenges for affordable processing. 🔭 ASTRON's Chris Broekema will visit CogniGron on Tuesday 18 June to talk about how to keep radio astronomy affordable and sustainable. Join us for this last seminar before the summer break! More information ➡ https://lnkd.in/ePMSecBD There's no need to sign up, just swing by! The seminar will be held at Zernike, in the Energy Academy Europe.📍 See you there! #astronomy #physics #science #greencomputing #CogniGron #energyefficient #lowpower #telescope #universe #FutureProofComputing

We are very proud of Emma van der Wateren for getting her PhD! Congratulations, Emma! 🎉