Centre of Expertise — Radio

Major European radio and mm-band facilities, including the EVN, e-MERLIN, LOFAR, and Effelsberg have extensive open observing programmes and related user support. These facilities have already produced great results in the field of the broader ACME science cases, but with the advent of the multi-messenger era there has been a strong interest from a broader user base that requires lowering the barriers of access (by improving tools and access policies) and extensive support beyond what has been offered already.

Through the Radio Joint Centres of Expertise, we will provide expertise across all radio wavelengths (from m to cm) and all facility types (single dish to interferometer) available to a broad user base through a distributed network of expertise nodes, including (but not limited to):

proposal writing (especially technical details),
observing schedule preparation,
data calibration, processing and imaging

List of nodes

enhanced Multi-Element Radio Interferometer Network (e-MERLIN)

Radio

e-MERLIN is an array of seven radio telescopes spanning 217 km (135 miles) across Great Britain connected by a superfast optical fibre network to its headquarters at Jodrell Bank Observatory. It has a unique position in the world with an angular resolution comparable...

ASTRON – Science Data Center Operations (SDCO)

Radio

ASTRON operates the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope, distributed across Europe, which represents a research infrastructure (LOFAR-ERIC) dedicated to provide the wider astronomical community with the highest resolution observations at the lowest radio...

JIVE

Radio

The Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE) is a research infrastructure providing central support to the European VLBI Network (EVN). JIVE's mission is to promote and implement the use of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) and other radio astronomical techniques....