The JIVE Annual Report 2021 is now available. It presents a summary of JIVE’s many activities throughout the year.
Find below several highlights from the JIVE Annual Report 2021 contents:
- Review of JIVE services and operations: The COVID-19 Pandemic had only a minor impact on the operations of the European VLBI Network (EVN) thanks to the combined efforts of the JIVE and EVN staff.
- Research and Development highlights: JIVE facilitated excellent science results including the highest time resolution study of a repeating fast radio burst source to date by Nimmo et al. (2021), providing invaluable information on the magnetosphere enveloping the neutron star, a multi-wavelength campaign on the famous supermassive black hole M87, in which the EVN participated, by the EHT MWL Science Working Group et al. (2021), and a detailed study of radio-weak active galactic nuclei in the GOODS-N field by Radcliffe et al. (2021), among others. The year 2021 also brought further development in Space and Planetary science at JIVE with the advancements on the PRIDE experiment, which will be the VLBI component of ESA’s JUICE mission with an expected launch in April 2023. And the advancement of VLBI toward microarcsecond angular resolution got new momentum within the concept of THEZA initiated in 2019. Furthermore, JIVE’s software development and in-house expertise continued contributing to the worldwide VLBI community. For instance, JIVE staff finished installation, configuration and delivery of a Central Monitoring System for the EVN in the framework of the H2020 JUMPING JIVE project.
- A summary of JIVE sustainability actions: A great accomplishment during 2021 was to achieve full membership of Italy in the JIVE ERIC. Italy was one of the founding members of the EVN in the early eighties and through the Institute of Radio Astronomy (IRA-INAF), Italy has supported and been involved with JIVE for several decades. In March 2021, by joining the JIVE ERIC entity, Italy supported the sustainability of JIVE for VLBI science, serving as the operational hub of the European VLBI Network and guarding the interests of the global radio-astronomical user community. Even though, the EC H2020 funded JUMPING JIVE project came successfully to an end in 2021, many of the activities are however continuing, since these have become core activities in JIVE, like exploring new partnerships to JIVE and the EVN, support to training activities in Africa, and SKA-VLBI. Other projects such as H2020 ESCAPE continued, and the ERIC Forum, of which the JIVE director became chair of the executive board and spokesperson towards the European Commission and other stakeholders. The kick-off of the H2020 Opticon RadioNet Pilot (ORP) project in March 2021 established also a firm stable financial basis for JIVE’s work programme in the coming years.
Additional information
The European VLBI Network (EVN) is an interferometric array of radio telescopes spread throughout Europe, Asia, South Africa and the Americas that conducts unique, high-resolution, radio astronomical observations of cosmic radio sources. Established in 1980, the EVN has grown into the most sensitive VLBI array in the world, including over 20 individual telescopes, among them some of the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescopes. The EVN is composed of 13 Full Member Institutes and 5 Associated Member Institutes.
The Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE) has as its primary mission to operate and develop the EVN data processor, a powerful supercomputer that combines the signals from radio telescopes located across the planet. Founded in 1993, JIVE is since 2015 a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), currently with seven member countries: France, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Spain and Sweden; additional support is received from partner institutes in China, Germany and South Africa. JIVE is hosted by the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) in the Netherlands.
Links
Download the JIVE Annual Report 2021 here.
Contact
Francisco Colomer
JIVE Director
colomer@jive.eu
Jorge Rivero González
JIVE Science Communications Officer
rivero@jive.eu