Astronomy

The Alma Observatory and REUNA have joined forces to establish a network node on the Chajnantor Plain, in the north of Chile, to improve connectivity for the telescopes located there.

“Simple pen and paper are not enough; numerical modelling is needed. This kind of modelling is also challenging because of many different time and other scales, and it requires supercomputer resources,” says Professor Maarit Korpi-Lagg.

Construction of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope has been initiated in South Africa and Australia. A major part of the challenge is to provide the necessary high-speed bandwidth.

A research team used telescopes around the world, including CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope – Murriyang, to complete the most challenging tests yet of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and found it holds true.

While astronomers tackle the largest research area possible – the entire universe beyond the Earth’s atmosphere – just a few telescopes around the world provide much of the data they study to uncover the secrets of the universe’s celestial objects.

Thanks to the technology developed by the Institute of Astronomy and the high-performance Belnet connection, (future) astronomers will be able to continue their research from 3,000 kilometres away during the COVID-19 crisis.

Scientists investigate mysterious Lithium-producing stars using Australia's interconnected national research infrastructure.

The collapse of the famous Arecibo Observatory Radio Telescope, Puerto Rico, at December 1, 2020, was a great loss for science. Still, things could have been a lot worse...

Weather satellites provide raw data for weather and climate models. EUMETSAT collects this raw data and distributes the processed data to weather institutes in its member countries, such as the Dutch KNMI. The institutes themselves contribute to the processing of the data. How does this work, how are the data distributed, and what is SURF's role?

The job of the brokers is to create tools and algorithms that allow the automated analysis of data from large scanning telescopes, in order to identify the most interesting astronomical objects.

Scientists at the University of Calgary in Canada are spearheading aurora studies, that will help us model and predict space weather and understand the Earth’s magnetosphere.

The Square Kilometre Array, known as the SKA, will become the world’s biggest radio telescope, surveying the sky ten thousand times faster than ever before.