ISTITUTO DI RADIOASTRONOMIA INAF STATUS REPORT October 2007 http://www.ira.inaf.it/ Chapter 1. STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION The Istituto di Radioastronomia (IRA) is presently the only INAF structure with divisions distributed over the national territory. Such an organization came about because IRA was originally a part of the National Council of Research (CNR), which imposed the first of its own reforms in 2001. The transition from CNR to INAF began in 2004 and was completed on January 1st , 2005. The Institute has its headquarters in Bologna in the CNR campus area, and two divisions in Firenze and Noto. The Medicina station belongs to the Bologna headquarters. A fourth division is foreseen in Cagliari at the Sardinia Radiotelescope site. The IRA operates 3 radio telescopes: the Northern Cross Radio Telescope (Medicina), and two 32-m dishes (Medicina and Noto), which are used primarily for Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observations. The IRA leads the construction of the Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT), a 64-m dish of new design. This is one of the INAF large projects nowadays. The aims of the Institute comprise: - the pursuit of excellence in many research areas ranging from observational radio astronomy, both galactic and extragalactic, to cosmology, to geodesy and Earth studies; - the design and management of the Italian radio astronomical facilities; - the design and fabrication of instrumentation operating in bands from radio to infrared and visible. Main activities of the various sites include: Bologna: The headquarters are responsible for the institute management and act as interface with the INAF central headquarters in Roma. Much of the astronomical research is done in Bologna, with major areas in cosmology, extragalactic astrophysics, star formation and geodesy. IRA-Bologna has strong interactions with the local University and is an important facility for educational activities at medium (master degrees) and high (PhD) levels. Computer science is also an important part of the activity at the Institute. Medicina: The radio astronomy station is directly associated with Bologna headquarters. It hosts the Northern Cross and the 32-m VLBI radio telescope, and houses the core of laboratories for the development of radio astronomy instrumentation and of SRT. Firenze: The division is hosted by the Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri. IRA-Firenze is involved with the design and development of radio and infrared technology, including the participation in the international projects ALMA and Herschel. Much research is also conducted at Firenze, including extragalactic astrophysics and star formation. Noto: This division manages the second 32-m VLBI radio telescope. The staff is also involved in the development of technological instrumentation. The scientific staff is limited to only 2 people, with interest in the radio emission of evolved stars, in addition to extragalactic studies. Cagliari: In the context of the SRT project, when the Istituto di Radioastronomia still belonged to the CNR, some permanent staff was recruited by the CNR to form the core of 2 the future division at the Sardinia Radiotelescope site. With the transition of IRA to INAF, the Cagliari personnel (6 people including 5 scientists and 1 technician) was temporarily assigned to the Osservatorio di Cagliari (for 3 years, until 31 December 2008). Therefore, these people are not considered as IRA staff in this document. IRA participates in several international Consortia: in 1988 it contributed to the establishment of the "European Consortium for VLBI in Europe" together with Max- Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie (D), Jodrell Bank (UK), Onsala (S), Westerbork (NL), to provide the scientific community with observing time within the interferometric network formed by the radio telescopes of each institution (on a peer-review basis). Later the Consortium was open to other radio astronomy institutes from countries including Poland, Spain, France, China, Finland, and others. In 1995 the Consortium decided to create an International Institute, the "Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe" (JIVE), with the financial support of the EC and of the research Agencies from the participating countries. The IRA was among the protagonists in the management of JIVE, in recognition of the importance of its International nature and great impact. JIVE manages the VLBI correlator and provides support to astronomers and the Telescope Network. IRA is part of the international VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry (IVS) which coordinates geodetic observations. Together with other ten countries (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States) IRA signed the first Memorandum of Understanding to establish the International Square Kilometre Array Steering Committee (ISSC), on August 2000, at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Manchester (England). This was superseded by a Memorandum of Agreement to Collaborate in the Development of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) which became operational on January 1st, 2005. The Italian representative is now INAF. IRA/INAF is partner of the EC proposals SKADS (FP6) aimed at developing a design study for SKA, and is partner of PrepSKA, an EC (FP7) proposal to integrate the R&D work from around the globe in order to develop the fully-costed design of SKA. IRA has been involved for many years in major space and ground projects, related to radio and optical-IR techniques. Beside the realization of the Sardinia Radio Telescope, the institute contributes to the management, design and instrument development of the ESA project Herschel, of the future large ground-based interferometers ALMA, LOFAR and SKA. IRA is partner of projects funded by the EC (FP6) for the technology and scientific developments including FARADAY, SKADS, EXPReS, ESTRELA, RadioNet, MCCT- SKADS. The Institute is currently actively involved in the preparation of the FP7 proposal for RadioNet. On behalf of INAF, IRA-Bologna hosts the Italian ALMA Regional Center. For any further detail on the institute organization and projects see the web pages. 3 Chapter 2. RESEARCH PROGRAMS The research programs of IRA are extensively described at the institute web pages (http://www.ira.inaf.it/inaf_ira/Research.html) and reported in Annex 1. IRA scientists collaborate with other Italian and International research institutions as well as with Italian and foreign universities. In the following a summary is given with emphasis on the relevant achievements, instruments used and future prospects. For the detailed description of the topics, see Annex 1. The site where most of the research is performed is indicated in parentheses. Surveys and observational cosmology (Bologna). The institute is involved in many survey projects in the framework of large international collaborations. In particular, IRA has a long-standing tradition in radio surveys since the pioneering work with the Northern Cross in the early seventies which produced the B2 catalog, with about 10,000 sources at 408 MHz. Nowadays, IRA is involved in surveys carried out in the radio, optical and X- ray bands. Large sky surveys at all wavelengths are of fundamental importance to astronomy. Complete, unbiased surveys provide a description of the general properties of celestial objects, and are necessary tools to build well defined samples of different classes of objects to be used for cosmological studies. The observation and analysis of deep radio fields performed at IRA have allowed the characterization of the sub-mJy and µJy populations, responsible for the flattening of normalized counts at 1.4 GHz, and the characterization of large scale structure using data from both optical and X-ray surveys. These studies are carried out with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), the Very Large Array in USA (VLA), the Giant Metre Radio Telescope in India (GMRT), the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, and the ROSAT X-ray satellite. A survey project for a legacy e-MERLIN proposal has been presented at the special session in Manchester (October 2007) and will be further discussed with other international groups working in this field. Research activity in this area include studies on surveys such as: - ATESP 1.4 GHz and 5 GHz surveys - VIRMOS-VLT Deep Surveys (VVDS) - VLA-VVDS Survey - VLA-COSMOS - B3 VLA Survey - CMB Foreground Emission Surveys - The North Ecliptic Pole Survey Extragalactic radio sources and their evolution (Bologna). The scientific research on extragalactic radio sources is one of the most active fields of the Institute. The ultimate goal is to understand the origin of the radio emission, in all its different aspects, in young and old sources, small and giant sources, active and relaxed sources, and their polarization 4 properties. The studies at the radio, optical, infrared, X-ray wavelengths are used to compare different emission mechanisms and to determine the evolutionary properties of radio sources. Results obtained in this field are: estimates of the ages of radio sources and of their cosmological evolution, estimate of the jet velocity and propagation, relation between radio emission properties and other wavelength properties, interaction between radio sources and the environment. This research relies on facilities including the VLA (New Mexico), the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) in The Netherlands, MERLIN, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo TNG (Canary Islands), the IRAM 30m Telescope. Topics