NRAO Newsletter
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NRAO Newsletter
Volume Vol#, Issue Iss# • Day# Month# Year#
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observes the Universe from Chile. (Photo by Bettymaya Foott, U.S. NSF / AUI / NSF NRAO)
Upcoming Science Events
IEEE International Microwave Symposium
June 15-20, 2025 | San Francisco, CA
International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy
June 23-27, 2025 | Urbana-Champaign, IL
NRAO Budget Outlook
The NRAO is continuing to operate using NSF funding received as part of the Federal FY2025 Continuing Resolution. On May 30th, the NSF FY2026 budget (responding to the President's Budget Request for FY2026) was released. The NSF document proposes deep cuts (30-40%) to the annual funding of most NSF Major Facilities, including a 34% cut to NRAO (ranging from 19% for ALMA, to 68% for the Green Bank Telescope). These figures represent the start of a several-month dialog between NSF, NRAO, AUI and the community about the importance and future of scientific user facilities in the United States, and we are hopeful that the cuts seen in the NSF FY2026 Budget proposal will be mitigated or dismissed.
Over the past several months we have changed our range of services offered to the community in response to flat funding profiles: limiting student programs, publication support, travel support, etc. Members of the community anticipating relying on NRAO financial support should check the relevant Observatory webpages to ensure they understand any changes.
We are passing through a difficult time, and communications are rarely perfect. Please don’t hesitate to contact your NRAO collaborators or program points-of-contact if you have questions about Observatory status and programs.
Jean Turner named 2025 Jansky Lecturer
The NRAO is pleased to award the 2025 Karl G. Jansky Lectureship to Dr. Jean Turner, Research Professor, Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. The Jansky Lectureship is an honor established by the trustees of AUI to recognize and celebrate outstanding contributions to the advancement of radio astronomy.
Jean Turner earned her A.B. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA, she conducted research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and held visiting scientist positions at Caltech, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and the Joint ALMA Observatory.
In addition to her observational work, Jean played a key role in the development and commissioning of two major millimeter and submillimeter facilities: the Hat Creek Millimeter Interferometer and the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA). She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Jean is recognized for her groundbreaking research in radio astronomy, with a focus on star formation, molecular clouds, and the interstellar medium. Her work has advanced our understanding of the structure and dynamics of star-forming regions in both the Milky Way and nearby galaxies through high-resolution radio and millimeter-wave observations.
A central theme of her research is the study of super star clusters and compact, energetic sites of massive star formation. Her investigations of galaxies such as NGC 5253—using instruments like ALMA—have shed light on how massive stars and clusters form in dense, dust-enshrouded environments. Her detailed analysis of ionized and molecular gas, along with dust properties, has provided key insights into the earliest stages of star and galaxy evolution.
Moreover, Jean has significantly advanced the use of molecular tracers to probe dense gas and the conditions that foster efficient star formation. Her pioneering application of interferometric techniques has enabled precise mapping of gas dynamics and structure, refining our models of how massive stars shape their environments. Alongside her scientific contributions, she is a dedicated mentor and a leader in major observational efforts, firmly establishing her as a prominent figure in contemporary radio astronomy.
The public lecture dates will be announced soon.
2025B Proposal Review
The NRAO has completed the Semester 2025B proposal review and time allocation process for the Very Large Array (VLA), Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), and the Green Bank Telescope (GBT).
For the VLA the B-configuration will be available in the 25B semester and 164 new proposals were received by the 29 January 2025 submission deadline, including twenty-five time critical (triggered) proposals. The oversubscription rate (by proposal number) was 2.6 and the proposal pressure (hours requested over hours available) was 2.7, both of which are similar to recent semesters.
For the VLBA 70 new proposals were submitted. The oversubscription rate was 2.1 and the proposal pressure was 3.1, typical of past semesters.
For the GBT 53 proposals were received for the 25B Semester. The oversubscription rate was 1.7 and the proposal pressure was 3.4, higher than past semesters due to several proposals with large time requests.
There were twenty joint proposals submitted that requested time with our partner observatories: ALMA, JWST, HST, Swift, Chandra, XMM-Newton, NICER, and IXPE.
The proposals were reviewed for scientific merit by ten Science Review Panels (SRPs) and for technical feasibility by NRAO staff. These reviews were completed in February - March 2025 and then considered by the Time Allocation Committee (TAC) during a face-to-face meeting on 15-16 April 2025. The TAC - comprising the 10 SRP chairs - was charged with recommending a science program for Semester 2025B to the Observatory Director. The recommended program was reviewed and approved on 2 May 2025.
A disposition letter was sent to the Principal Investigator and Co-Investigators of each proposal on 13 May 2025 and a TAC report containing information for proposers and observers, including statistics and telescope pressure plots, was released the same day. The approved science program for the VLA, VLBA, and GBT has been posted to the NRAO science website. The authors, title, abstract, and scheduled hours for each approved proposal can be accessed from the Proposal Finder Tool.
The NRAO welcomes community feedback on the proposal review and time allocation process. Please provide such feedback via the Proposal Review department of the NRAO Helpdesk.
Photos: GBT - Jay Young; VLA - Jeff Hellerman; VLBA - AUI; (U.S. NSF / AUI / NSF NRAO)
Science Spotlight: ALMA Observations of Spicules in the limb of the Sun
Figure above: A comparison between ALMA and IRIS observations. Left: Spicules seen in 3 mm (lower part) and by the IRIS slit-jaw imager in the 2796 Å band (upper part). Right: The same, but the lower part of the composite shows the 1.25 mm emission. The white arc indicates the photospheric limb.
Solar spicules are small plasma jets of a few hundred kilometers in diameter that are launched to heights >10 Mm with speeds ranging from a few 10s of km/s to >100 km/s. Individually they have lifetimes of a few minutes. They occur in the chromospheric magnetic network with ~106 spicules present on the Sun at any given time. Early and oft-repeated estimates suggested that spicules carry an upward mass flux 100 times that required to replenish losses from the corona due to the solar wind.
Observations at millimeter wavelengths (mm-λ) are highly complementary to those in the O/UV/EUV bands. This is because spicular emission is free-free radiation from thermal electrons in LTE, the source function at mm-λ is therefore Planckian, and the Rayleigh-Jeans approximation is valid - greatly simplifying its interpretation. In contrast, O/UV lines are formed in non-LTE and their interpretation can be frought. Observations of the Sun in general and spicules in particular at mm-λ were hampered in past years by a lack of angular and temporal resolution. With the availability of ALMA, that has now changed. ALMA can image spicules with arcsec resolution and can resolve their kinematics with high cadence imaging when imaged on the solar limb.
ALMA observations were obtained on 2018 December 25 in the 3 mm band over a field of view of approximately 60" with a cadence of 2 s, and in the 1.25 mm band over a similar field of view with a cadence of nearly 2 min. Figure 1 shows a 2s snapshot images of spicules in ALMA band 3 and a mosaic formed in band 6. Both are compared with emission in the IRIS-4 2796 Å band, which is dominated by emission in the Mg II resonance line formed at temperatures 5-15 x 103 K (also visible in the animation (left; click to enlarge) comparing Band 3 and IRIS 2796 Å data).
Details may be found in the paper published in the Astrophysical Journal by Bastian et al. (2025) or on arXiv.
Would you like your science featured in the NRAO Science Newsletter? Email the editor Brian Kent with your recent science publications!
VLA Sky Survey: Final Observational Campaign
Figure (left): A comparison of the counts of detected source components in Quick Look images from Epoch 2 (green spikes), Epoch 3 (open blue histogram) and the median stack (red filled histogram). The increase in counts below the limits of the Epoch 1 and 2 catalogs shows the improved sensitivity of the 3-epoch median stacked images.
The VLA Sky Survey will begin its final observational campaign, VLASS4.1, in September, providing a 4th Epoch of observations for half the sky that will be used in place of the VLASS1.1 observations for making the final Single Epoch and Cumulative images, besides producing a fourth set of Quick Look images over half the sky. (The VLASS1.1 observations were affected by an antenna pointing error that can only be corrected with a very large amount of computational expense.) VLASS4.1 will last from 2025 September 3 to 2026 February 9, with the last 2.5 weeks spent in the BnA configuration to image the Southern sky (typically Dec < -8 deg).
We are also pleased to announce the release of interim Quick Look source component lists for the 3rd Epoch observations and the 3-epoch median stack (produced by NRAO Jansky Fellow Dillon Dong). These interim lists are intended to be used for planning follow-ups and monitoring in conjunction with the Epoch 4 data and will be superseded by a full set of Quick Look transient and persistent source lists (Dong et al. in preparation). The lists may be found on the archive website (together with the Epoch 1 and 2 component lists produced by the CIRADA collaboration) and are documented in VLASS Memo 22.
Flux density scaling factors for the on-going flare in 3C138
VLA measured Stokes I at Q Band from the TCAL0009 program relative to the Perley & Butler (2017) (black points) from Jan. 2021 to Apr. 2025. Scaling factors are evaluated on a monthly basis from a smooth spline fit to the data (red curve). Click to enlarge.
Since early 2020 the VLA flux density scale standard calibrator 3C138 has been undergoing a nuclear flare that significantly impacts observations at S Band and above. As of April, 2025, the magnitude of the flare compared to the reference model in CASA from Perley & Butler (2017) is approximately a factor of 2 at K Band, 3 at Ka Band, and 4 at Q Band. Monthly monitoring observations of 3C138 and other calibrators from 2020 are available on the NRAO archive under the project code TCAL0009. We have also now made available a table of scaling factors per month per band for users to apply to images produced from affected datasets. To help mitigate month-to-month systematic uncertainties, the time-series of measured flux densities are smoothed with a low-order Savitzky-Golay filter and then re-evaluated on the first of the month using a basis spline. Figure 1 shows the measured light curve and the spline fit for Q Band. The table and further description can be found in the flux density scale calibration section of the VLA Observer's Guide.
GBT Data Availability Policy Change
During the 24B and 25A semesters, several types of observations could not be scheduled on the GBT due to inadequate disk space being available for new data. As new instruments become available that generate data at higher data rates, it is expected that this situation would happen more frequently without any change to the GBT's operational model. We have re-evaluated how GBT data are being handled and have determined that a few minor changes should allow sufficient disk space to be available for all new GBT observations for the foreseeable future.
Here are the highlights of these new procedures and how they will impact GBT observers:
- GBT data currently remain readily available on disks for 12-24 months. Starting with the 25B semester this will be reduced to 3-6 months.
- GBT data will continue to be archived after the aforementioned time period. Once archived the data will no longer be readily available on disks.
- Archived data can be requested via the NRAO Science Helpdesk.
- NRAO is working on making GBT data available in the Archive Access Tool (AAT).
- GBT data is not expected to be available via the AAT before 2028.
- Observers are encouraged to copy data to personal storage areas within 3-6 months of the observation.
Cosmic Horizons: AI-Powered Insights
The University of Texas at Austin hosted the Cosmic Horizons: AI-Powered Insights conference to talk about the latest development in AI, machine learning, and computing techniques in modern astronomy. (Left: CosmicAI Director Stella Offner, University of Texas, Austin, leads a career panel during the meeting.)
Read the News Release from CosmicAI.
The recent revolution in AI is fundamentally changing how astronomers observe, explore, analyze, and model astronomical data. The Cosmic Horizons conference was designed to bring together researchers who are actively developing and applying AI/ML methods in astronomy. (Right: ngVLA Project Scientist Eric Murphy introduces Brian Kirk to talk about Reinforcement Learning for Radio Interferometry Data Processing.)
The conference focused on recent advances at the intersection of AI and Astronomy and AI-powered progress towards understanding our cosmic origins, from cosmology to habitability; methodologies to increase the trustworthiness, robustness, interpretability, and efficiency of AI applications in astronomy; and preparation for the big-data challenges posed by next-generation observing facilities and approaches for analyzing high-dimensional data. (Left: NRAO Scientist Brian Mason discusses the Observable Universe Working Group.)
NRAO Jansky Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Cosima Eibensteiner and NRAO/UVa Graduate Student Anna Dignan participated in the CosmicAI Bootcamp in Austin, Texas. The bootcamp was an intensive week of AI training and hands-on AI-astronomy activities. A new graduate certificate program is also being offered - an Graduate Certificate In AI and Machine Learning with an Astrophysics-AI Badge option. The program equips professionals from all scientific fields with essential AI skills for data analysis, predictive modeling, and research - fostering career advancement and long-term growth in AI-driven fields. Applications are now open.
Visit the CosmicAI website to learn more. (Right: NRAO Scientist Antonio Hales talks about AI-powered reconstruction with NRAO Scientist Adele Plunkett and Astronomer Eric Murphy.)
GBO Fermi Bubbles Workshop
The Green Bank Observatory hosted a workshop on the Fermi Bubbles in honor of Jay Lockman's 50+ years of service to NRAO/GBO.
The Fermi Bubbles are a striking signature of the large-scale, multi-phase galactic outflow originating from the center of the Milky Way. Over the last 15 years, advancements in both observational techniques and theoretical models have greatly enhanced our understanding of this nuclear outflow. However, these developments have also unveiled new questions, highlighting the intricate nature of its formation, energy dynamics, and broader astrophysical significance. This Green Bank Workshop brought together researchers studying the Fermi Bubbles and nuclear outflows, emphasizing both observational discoveries and theoretical insights. Discussions covered the latest multi-wavelength observations of the multi-phase nuclear wind of the Milky Way, as well as the most recent theories on its formation and evolution. The conference also explored local analogues in the Universe, fostering collaboration across disciplines.
Deadline Extended: Astrochemistry in the Broadband Era Workshop
The deadline has been extended for abstracts and registration with the Astrochemistry in the Broadband Era (specifically ngVLA and ALMA WSU) workshop in Portland, Maine Oct 21-23. Abstract submission for posters is still open, and Early-bird Registration runs through July 1st.
The astrochemical science that can currently be accomplished with radio facilities is fundamentally limited by narrow spectral bandwidths, but we are about to enter a new era of broadband radio astronomy. ALMA (following the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade, WSU) and the next-generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) will both deliver unprecedented spectral bandwidths while maintaining exquisite spectral resolution and sensitivity. This data quality will transform the field of astrochemistry, but will also require entirely new approaches to data analysis. This workshop is intended to survey the current state of astrochemistry in this specific context, identify high-priority science that can be achieved in the Broadband Era, and develop a community roadmap for approaching these new data challenges.
The structure of this workshop is somewhat different from a normal meeting with most talk slots geared to setting up the daily group discussions. The program will include:
- "Primer" talks on specific topics given by ngVLA/WSU personnel and/or SOC members.
- Invited outlook talks addressing key opportunities and challenges.
- Focused science talks contributed from a small number of attendees.
- A number of hour-long, moderated and guided group discussion sections on big-picture topics.
The workshop will last the full days Tuesday 21 - Thursday 23 October (a preliminary program is available on the website). Participants should plan to arrive on Monday, 20 October and depart on Friday, 24 October. The workshop will take place at the Portland Regency Hotel and Spa in Portland, Maine. We expect the registration fee for the conference to be ~$375. We have secured lodging blocks at substantially below the seasonal rates for the area. Limited financial support is available to support students who could not otherwise attend.
Attendance at the workshop is strictly capped at 110 people due to the capacity of the venue. Once our capacity is reached, we will start a waitlist. Further details, and abstract submission and pre-registration, are available on the conference website.
NRAO Time Allocation Changes
With the global radio-astronomy community continuing to grow, and new observatories adopting a variety of access models, the NRAO remains committed to an open-skies philosophy driven by scientific merit. To uphold this principle in a landscape where reciprocal, unrestricted access is not universally ensured, and to position the U.S. astronomy community for continued success, we are adapting our long-standing framework to preserve both the quality and equity of scientific output from our facilities.
Effective with the 26A semester Call for Proposals (CfPs), the NRAO will employ institution-based country caps on VLA1 observing time to modulate the share of observing time allocated to foreign institutions.
Firstly, only proposals assigned A or B scheduling priority will be eligible for time allocation when the Principal Investigator's institution is located outside the United States.
Secondly, each semester the aggregate share of time awarded to PIs from foreign institutions will not exceed 30% of the total allocated time, and no country's PIs will receive more than 10% of the allocated time. These constraints will also apply to DDT and Large proposals, except that the total foreign limit of 30% will not apply to DDT proposals.
Thirdly, the proprietary period for PI-only access to observing data in the NRAO archive will be extended to two years (all PI nationalities).
Fourthly, if additional proposals are required to optimally schedule the instruments during a semester, an additional US-PI-only rapid call will be conducted by NRAO.
Lastly, reciprocity between worldwide astronomical institutions and facilities and NRAO/U.S. astronomers will now be explicitly assessed, with results used to constrain specific national or institutional access to NRAO facilities.
We anticipate several existing and planned partnership agreements between NRAO and specific foreign institutions and communities, and/or participation in joint radio astronomy development projects, may reduce these foreign restriction caps in the future.
[1] The VLBA and GBT will be added to this scheme in Semester 27B. ALMA will not participate in these restrictions.
ALMA News
Antennas of the ALMA Telescope Array in Chile are moved into position for the next observing configuration.
ALMA Status
The array has been moved to configuration C-7 with 3.6 km baselines and a beam of ~0.28" before transitioning to configuration C-8 with 8.5 km baselines and a beam of about 0.16" at 100 GHz (Band 3) as winter arrives at the ALMA site on the high Chajnantor Plateau near the tropic of Capricorn.
Cycle 12 Call for Proposals
The community submitted 1642 proposals to make observations with ALMA. Each proposal is proceeding through an anonymous selection process to determine which projects will be observed in Cycle 12. Results will be communicated to PIs in August 2025. The Cycle 12 observations will be scheduled between October 2025 and September 2026.
ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU)
Preparations are under way for the WSU System Preliminary Design Review which will be held at NRAO / Charlottesville on July 8-11, 2025. The scope of this major review includes, amongst other topics, plans and strategy for assembly , integration, verification and commissioning (AIVC), plans for the transition towards WSU operations, and definition of requirements, specifications and interfaces.
ALMA and NAASC Meetings
Science with strong lensing, ALMA and next generation radio interferometry
The Science with strong lensing, ALMA, and next generation radio interferometry meeting happened in Charlottesville on May 7-9, 2025, bringing together 20 members (group photo at left) of the the Planck All-Sky Survey to Analyze Gravitationally-lensed Extreme Starbursts (PASSAGES) international collaboration for discussions and talks on using ALMA observations to access spatial scales of 10-100 pc on galaxies at z>1.
Registration is still open for these upcoming meetings:
International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy (ISMS), June 23-27, Urbana-Champaign IL
The ISMS is the leading annual conference in this dynamic and interdisciplinary field, bringing together experts for a unique blend of plenary talks from world-renowned leaders and parallel sessions featuring shorter presentations, many given by graduate students. The 78th edition will feature the ALMA/NGVLA-themed mini-symposium: "Astrochemistry - Laboratory, Computations, and Observations". Full-Price Registration begins May 16.
Astrochemistry in the Broadband Era Workshop, October 21-23, Portland, Maine
This workshop is intended to survey the current state of astrochemistry in this specific context, identify high-priority science that can be achieved in the Broadband Era, and develop a community roadmap for approaching these new data challenges. Abstract submission for posters is still open, and Early-bird Registration runs through July 1st.. Further details are available on the conference website.
Other upcoming meetings:
- Identifying and Bridging Gaps in Laboratory Astrophysics Workshop, June 7-8, Anchorage, AK
- Infrared Fine-Structure Lines Workshop, June 10-13, Winona, WI
- Origins of Solar Systems Gordon research conference, June 15-20, South Hadley, MA
- Third North America-Taiwan joint ALMA Science Workshop, June 16-20, Taipei, Taiwan
- New Data that Challenge Underlying Assumptions in Early Galaxy Evolution, July 28- August 1, Acadia National Park, Maine
ngVLA Project News
Prototype Antenna Handover
On 25 April, mtex antenna technology GmbH officially handed over the prototype antenna for the proposed ngVLA to the NSF NRAO. The handover ceremony occurred at the NSF Very Large Array site on the Plains of San Agustin, New Mexico. Attendees included colleagues from Mexico and Germany, New Mexico state representatives, contractors from mtex, NRAO and ngVLA project staff, and members of the ngVLA Science and Technical Councils. The handover marks a significant step forward in the proposed ngVLA project, setting the stage for further testing and development in New Mexico.
New Partnerships with Universities
On 19 May, NSF NRAO and Johns Hopkins University (JHU) announced a new partnership that leverages on JHU's strengths in data science, artificial intelligence, and astrophysics. By combining the NSF NRAO's expertise in radio astronomy with JHU's cutting-edge computational resources in Maryland, the collaboration will tackle the immense data processing and analysis challenges posed by the ngVLA and future astronomical surveys.
On 25 April, NSF NRAO and the University of Florida announced a new partnership to advance science education and public outreach at a future ngVLA Long site in Florida. This partnership brings together world-class scientific expertise and educational leadership to create unique opportunities for students, educators, and the public across Florida.
ngVLA Science - Finally, a Radio Counterpart to the ULX Source M82 X-1
Figure: e-MERLIN 5-6 GHz image from 2015 near the IMBH candidate M82 X-1 (magenta x and 3-sigma localization region). Contours show the new e-MERLIN radio source, 41.37+60.2, later detected by the EVN+e-MERLIN (black +). The well-known SNR 41.30+59.6 is just beyond the localization region of M82 X-1 (Xu et al. 2015). Adapted from Williams-Baldwin et al. (2025).
Nearby galaxies are perfect laboratories for studying the end products of stellar evolution in the radio band, as centimeter frequencies are unaffected by the dust and gas in star forming regions. For this reason the starburst galaxy M82 has been regularly monitored by high resolution radio interferometers over the last 40 years (e.g. Kronberg and Sramek 1985, Muxlow et al. 1994, Kording et al. 2005, Fenech et al. 2010). In addition to flux density monitoring of the supernova remnants, progressively more sensitive radio observations have revealed a population of ultra-compact HII regions and some "exotic" variables and transients attributed to the supernova SN 2008iz (e.g., Brunthaler et al. 2009), microquasars (e.g. Kronberg and Sramek 1985, Muxlow et al. 2010, Joseph et al. 2011) and gamma ray burst afterglows (Muxlow et al. 2005). But in all this time, no radio source has been unequivocally associated with the brightest ultra-luminous X-ray source (ULX) in M82, M82 X-1.
M82 X-1 is considered to be one of the best intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) candidates due to its X-ray timing properties (e.g., Pasham et al. 2014). Various methods have suggested it has a black hole mass of 20-1000 solar masses (see Mondal et al. 2022 and references there-in). ULXs are off-nuclear compact X-ray sources with X-ray luminosity larger than 1039 erg/s. They were once thought to be a large population of IMBH candidates. However, several ULXs, including the nearby M82 X-2 have been found to be powered by neutron stars (Bachetti et al. 2014). Still, recent work has suggested that if star formation has been properly considered, then radio emission associated with a ULX is unlikely to be from a neutron star (Panurach et al. 2024). This motivates regular ULX monitoring to search for the expected faint radio flares from IMBH candidate systems.
In Williams-Baldwin et al. (2025 ), we re-processed datasets of M82 obtained over the last decade with e-MERLIN at 50-mas resolution. This led to the deepest e-MERLIN image of M82 to date, with a 1-sigma rms of 7 microJy/beam (see figure). A new radio source, named 41.37+60.2, was detected at more than 20 sigma (151+/-10 microJy/beam) and coincides with Chandra's X-ray position for M82 X-1 (Xu et al. 2015 ). Observations with e-MERLIN in 2016 did not detect the source, but an EVN+e-MERLIN observation in 2021 showed a spatially consistent radio source at 53+/-10 microJy/beam. The 2015/2016 data tentatively correlates with the X-ray fluxes (Brightman et al. 2020) obtained in this time interval, suggesting periods of activity in the radio may be related to the X-ray variability.
Future radio interferometers with angular resolutions of less than 100 mas, such as the ngVLA and SKA-MID, will have much improved instantaneous sensitivities, making routine monitoring of nearby starburst galaxies easier and more regular. With this improvement in sensitivity, we may expect more exotic radio sources to be detected in nearby galaxies, including significantly improving the number of radio-detected ULXs and IMBH candidates.
Since 2015 the acronym ngVLA has appeared in 1300+ publications indexed in the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System. This article continues a regular feature intended to showcase some of those publications. We are especially interested in showcasing work done by early-career researchers. The collection of showcase articles can be viewed online. Anyone wishing to volunteer to author a feature should contact Joan Wrobel.
Research Associate Position Opening
At the NRAO, we are seeking a research associate to work on exploring the physics of the Warm Ionized Medium (WIM) in the Galaxy. Observations consist of data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Green Bank Telescope (GBT).
The appointment will be for one year with a starting date of September 8, 2025.
Available work location for this position will be at the NRAO Headquarters in Charlottesville, VA. A domestic remote work arrangement may be possible depending on the incumbent’s work performance in a work-from-home situation.
The position will involve:
- Calibrating and reducing JWST MIRI MRS data toward the inner Galaxy.
- Investigating background models to accurately measure the spectral line properties of Ne, Ar, and S ions.
- Developing Cloudy simulations, constrained by JWST and GBT data, to explore the physics of the WIM.
Visit the NRAO/AUI Employment page to learn more.
Recent Science Media Releases
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Inaugural Cosmic Horizons Conference Unites Astronomers and AI Experts
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Charting the Cosmos Together: NRAO and Johns Hopkins University Launch ngVLA Partnership
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Lighting the Way with Cenca Bridge
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NSF NRAO Achieves First Successful Observations with New NSF VLBA Digital Architecture
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ngVLA Handover Ceremony
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NSF's ongoing technical coordination with satellite constellation operators
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Unveiling the Birth Secrets of Massive Stars with the NSF NRAO Very Large Array
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Contact the NRAO press office to share your new and exciting science results. |
From the Archives
Ellen Bouton
About this month's photograph: 2011 Charlottesville summer students. Seated left to right: Lia Medeiros, Raquel Chicharro Fuertes. Standing left to right: Christina DeBianchi, Brian Svoboda, Ajinkya Patil, Valerie Marchenko, Stephen Clouse, Courtney Laughlin, Ashley Reichardt, Sierra Smith, Ethan Kruse, Alexa Ross, Seth Jackson.
For over six decades, NRAO has welcomed summer students to our sites to work on a wide variety of research projects with NRAO staff mentors. Our 2025 class of 27 students will participate in a rich and unique research and professional development experience. The program kicked off with the "Radio Astronomy Bootcamp," a week-long workshop in Green Bank with lectures and hands-on observing. Students will work on their research in Green Bank, Charlottesville, and Socorro under the supervision of their mentors. Since its inception in 1959, the summer student program has engaged over 1,300 early career people in scientific research, and many NRAO summer students have gone on to distinguished careers in astronomy and other physical sciences.
From the Archives is an ongoing series illustrating NRAO and U.S. radio astronomy history via images selected from our collections of individuals' and institutional papers. If readers have images they believe would be of interest to the Archives, please contact Ellen Bouton.
