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Annual Report 2013 Cover Photo: the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) & Big Data, Danielle Futselaar © ASTRON

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Annual Report 2013 Cover Photo: the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) & Big Data, Danielle Futselaar © ASTRON Annual report 2013 Cover photo: The International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) & Big Data, Danielle Futselaar © ASTRON. Photo on this page: prototype for the Apertif phased array feed. The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) will be upgraded with Phased Array Feeds (PAFs), which will allow scientists to perform much faster observations with the telescope with a wider field of view. More information is available on the ASTRON/ JIVE daily image: http://www.astron.nl/ dailyimage/main.php?date=20130624. 2 ASTRON Annual report 2013 Facts and figures of 2013 8 Awards or grants 163 employees 162 refereed articles Funding: € 17,420,955 Expenditure: € 17,091,022 Balance: € 329.33 25 press releases 3 ASTRON Annual report 2013 Contents Facts and figures 2013 3 Director’s report 5 ASTRON Board and Management Team 7 ASTRON in brief 8 Contribution to top sectors 11 Performance indicators 12 Astronomy Group 17 Radio Observatory 22 R&D Laboratory 30 Connected legal entities 36 NOVA Optical/ Infrared Instrumentation Group 38 Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe 41 Outreach and education 43 Appendices 58 Appendix 1: financial summary 59 Appendix 2: personnel highlights 60 Appendix 3: WSRT & LOFAR proposals in 2013 62 Appendix 4: board, committees & staff in 2013 65 Appendix 5: publications 67 4 ASTRON Annual report 2013 Report 2013 was a year in which earlier efforts began to bear fruit. In particular, the various hardware and firmware changes made to the LOFAR telescope system in 2012, resulted in science quality data being delivered to the various Key Science Projects, and in particular the EoR (Epoch of Reionisation) Team. The data obtained over the 2012/2013 winter observing season, generated the deepest images yet of the low-frequency radio sky. These in turn, led to the best upper limits being placed on the EoR signal, as presented at a meeting in Groningen (and later Dwingeloo) to celebrate the 40 year career of ASTRON astronomer, Prof. Ger de Bruyn. Exciting results have also involved LOFAR observations of Pulsars, including the first LOFAR publication to appear in the journal Science. Results such as these were very much in evidence at the LOFAR Science meeting held in Dalfsen in April. The meeting underlined the fact that LOFAR has now entered its operational phase, following Director’s a busy observing schedule fueled by the successful 2012 ‘Cycle 0’ call for proposals. It is also clear, that the Radio Observatory’s Support Scientist Group (under the new leadership of Roberto Pizzo) has been a major facilitator in delivering science quality data to the community. Impressive images of the sky from MSSS (the Multi-frequency Snapshot Sky Survey) were a key highlight of the meeting. Although MSSS’s primary function is to produce a global sky model for initial calibration purposes, it is now also obvious that even this very shallow survey can also unearth some interesting science too. Despite all these advances, the need to an ERC consolidator grant, and Ger make it much easier for the community himself received an advanced ERC grant to fully exploit LOFAR data became a worth 3.5M€. These developments major priority for the institute in 2013. bring the total number of ERC fellows With this in mind, we established a at ASTRON to four – a tremendous LOFAR Calibration and Imaging Tiger achievement, permitting the Astronomy Team (CITT) under the leadership of Group to expand still further in 2014. MSSS PI and ASTRON astronomer, With a staff and postdoc complement of George Heald. The CITT is strongly around 30 FTEs, the Astronomy Group focused on progressing and developing at ASTRON now represents a significant user and pipeline software, in order to group – we’re proud to have established deliver processed and calibrated LOFAR one of the premier research centres for continuum data to the community. By radio astronomy in the world. October, the team was fully populated, including three full-time scientific The success of LOFAR is clearly also software developers (one provided effecting the SKA Phase 1 baseline by Prof. Morganti’s ERC award) and design. In 2013, the SKA Board confirmed a software integrator. Key additional ASTRON as the leader of both the Low- support is also coming from the Radio Frequency and Mid-Frequency Aperture Observatory Support Scientists. Array (LFAA and MFAA) work packages. In addition, we are also playing a There was more good news towards the substantial role in the Science Data end of the year, regarding the success Processing (SDP) work package. While of our astronomers to attract individual our contribution to the SDP WP is largely awards - Joeri van Leeuwen was awarded assured via the highly successful 5 ASTRON Annual report 2013 DOME collaboration, the need to attract generation of radio telescopes, also communication channels and to more new and additional funding in order to having a significant societal impact in transparently resolve resource conflicts. fully realise our ambitions in the LFAA terms of their valorization in commercial and MFAA Work Packages, led ASTRON and industrial applications. One project One of the major challenges ASTRON and the Dutch Universities to submit a 13 we are very excited about is the use of is currently dealing with is a significant M€ proposal to the National Roadmap. aperture arrays as a central clearing reduction of the base budget - a Submitted in October 2013, the outcome station for SAR (Search & Rescue) distress structural cut that rises to 4% in 2014 of this initiative is not expected to be signals received by multiple satellite onwards. Since ASTRON also relies on known until mid-2014, fingers crossed… transmissions simultaneously. Together essentially doubling its base budget via with ESA and other partners, we hope to external funding, the reduced matching The International SKA project also made continue to develop this idea towards a capability translates into a 4% cut in many step forwards in the course of commercial implementation. terms also of our total budget. Longer- 2013. With a new SKA DG in place, a term uncertainties in our base budget major milestone was the publication The development of APERTIF hardware require us to take a close look at our of the SKA1 Baseline Design and the made good progress this year but we various priorities, project portfolio and associated Request for Proposals (RfP) became aware of a problem related to commitments. In particular, we require which led to the assignment of various the increasingly poor radio frequency clarity on the base budget we receive consortia to the various work packages. interference (RFI) environment around from NWO beyond 2017. At the end An important aspect of the evolution of the Westerbork observatory due to of this year, the NWO General Board the baseline design is a series of science both local and satellite broadcasts. and the ASTRON Board met to have an workshops that took place through This has required us to introduce a initial discussion on some of these issues. the year in order to understand how room-temperature filter up-front in the More meetings are planned through the the design addresses the various key receiver chain that increases the system course of 2014 via the normal bilateral science goals. Our staff have been deeply noise from 55 to 70 K. In addition, the Board meetings. We’re confident that we involved in this work, both in terms of lower end of the original APERTIF band can reach a solution that preserves our the science and technology choices to be is also deemed to be un-useable, so the ambition without our jeopardising our made and in representation – in addition bottom end of the observable band has future. to leading 2 of the SKA work packages, been raised to ~ 1100 MHz. Despite this our staff are serving on the SKA Board, disappointing turn of events, enthusiasm Finally, I want to report on the fantastic the SKA Science & Engineering Advisory for APERTIF remains high with the progress being made with the new and Committee (SEAC), the SKA Operations new system still outperforming the renovated buildings at ASTRON this Group and the Science Working Groups. current WSRT by well over an order of year. The new building opened its doors The appointment of Robert Braun as SKA magnitude in terms of survey speed. At at the beginning of the year and the Science Director can be an important the end of the year, the APERTIF team new auditorium was inaugurated with step forward for the SKA - Robert was was busy preparing the hardware that is a workshop dedicated to the career formerly an astronomer at ASTRON, expected to be installed on three of the of Prof. Arnold van Ardenne. The new and he and Russ Taylor edited the first WSRT telescopes in April 2014. building makes ASTRON an even better scientific case for the telescope in the place to work than before and firmly mid-1990s. In August, Dr. Gert Kruithof was establishes Dwingeloo as one of the appointed as the new Head of our major centres for radio astronomy in the A welcome boost to our quest for R&D department. Gert immediately world. additional SKA R&D funding in 2013 made a very positive impact on the was the 1M€ grant awarded by the department, installing a new level Prof. Michael A. Garrett Northern Provinces (SNN) to support of discipline and rigour in the area General & Scientific Director ASTRON the development of SKA technology of project planning. This disciplined for advanced sensor networks and approach has also permeated into other bio-material research. This follows an parts of the organization, including the additional and again very welcome cross department projects such as CITT.
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