* Astronomy

EXPReS hailed as "extraordinarily successful" to SKA design

The European Commission concluded their final review of EXPReS (Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service), hailing the project as "extraordinarily successful" and encouraging the team to "explore any opportunity for further development".
The 3.5 year project, which concluded in August, established and improved network connectivity from some of the world's most sensitive radio telescopes to the correlator at the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE), in which ASTRON's Westerbork Synthesis Radio telescope participates. The project also improved computing capabilities of the correlator itself, making real-time, electronic VLBI a regular and reliable astronomy technique available to the global radio astronomy community. This new service makes it easier for scientists to identify transient astronomical activity and conduct follow-on observations.
In addition to the improvement in e-VLBI facilities, the EC also concluded that EXPReS will "inform the design of future facilities such as the SKA" (Square Kilometre Array).

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Radio-astronomers form telescope the size of Earth
Radio telescopes around the world will join forces this week to carry out a unique observation of three quasars, distant galaxies powered by super-massive black holes at their cores.
The nearly continuous 33-hour observation will be conducted on Jan 15-16 as part of a demonstration at the opening event for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA 2009) in Paris.
17 telescopes in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America, including several operated from The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory, will take part in the mammoth project.

"The unique aspect of these observations is that telescopes located all around the globe will be brought together to work in real-time as a single gigantic instrument" - Arpad Szomoru, Head of Technical Operations and R&D at the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE).

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