Netherlands Radio Astronomy Community Day, 16 June 2026, Leiden University

Tuesday 16 Jun 2026, 10:00 → 17:00 Europe/Amsterdam

GORLB - BM 1.33 (Leiden University)

This is a one-day meeting for anyone in the Netherlands astronomy community to discuss the current radio astronomy landscape and plan for the future. It will take place at  Leiden University on Tuesday 16 June 2026. We strongly encourage in-person participation, but there will be a possibility to remotely follow the meeting.

Registration is free of charge and open until 29 May 2026. 

Community contributions that highlight recent scientific advances in radio astronomy can be submitted through 15 May 2026 at the following link: NL Radio Astronomy Community Day contributions – Fill out form

We look forward to seeing you in Leiden or online in June!

Betsey Adams (SKAO/ASTRON/Kapteyn)

Violette Impellizzeri (ASTRON/Leiden)

Huib Jan van Langevelde (JIVE/Leiden)

Huub Rottgering (Leiden)

 

This event is supported by NWO, ASTRON, Leiden, and the RvdA

10:00 → 10:30 Coffee: Morning

10:30 → 10:40 Welcome and introduction to the day

10:40 → 11:30 National landscape: Updates from national facilities

10:40 LOFAR2

Speaker: Michiel van Haarlem

10:50 ALMA

Speaker: Michiel Hoogerheide

11:00 SKA

Speaker: Betsey Adams (ASTRON)

11:10 EHT/AMT

Speakers: Michael Janssen, TBC

11:20 JIVE

Speaker: Aga Słowikowska

11:30 → 12:00 Community updates: New frontiers in radio astronomy

11:30 Radio astronomy from lunar robotic outposts and bases: ARCHES DLR/ESA test campaign at Etna in 2022

We shall review some science objectives for small radio telescopes arrays that can be deployed from robotic landers, outposts and Moonbases. This covers Earth, solar, Jupiter-Io, solar system targets, flare stars , radio sources and galactic observations. We describe results from field campaigns ROBEX & ARCHES performed by DLR, ESA and partners at Etna (as a lunar site analogue ) with teleoperated and semi autonomous rovers, that deployed a range of experiments. This included the robotic deployment of an interferometric array of 4 radio antennas at 20 MHz. We shall describe operations, results and prospects for small precursor radio astronomy experiments on the Moon.

Wedler, A. et al German Aerospace Center's advanced robotic technology for future lunar scientific missions, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, Volume 379, Issue 2188, article id.20190574, Astronomy from the Moon

Schuster M et al The ARCHES Space-Analogue Demonstration Mission: Towards Heterogeneous Teams of Autonomous Robots for Collaborative Scientific Sampling in Planetary Exploration,
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Volume 5, Issue 4, pp. 5315-5322

Reilly, H, Foing B. & LEAPS ESTEC/Leiden students, Instruments Operations, Science and Innovation in Expedition Support: EuroMoonMars-Etna campaign 2021
15th Europlanet Science Congress 2021, held virtually, 13-24 September 2021. Online at https://www.epsc2021.eu/, id. EPSC2021-848

Speaker: Bernard Foing

11:40 ALMA2040: The high-definition future of millimeter/submillimeter astronomy

In the last 15 years, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)—one of ESO’s flagship facilities—has revolutionized astrophysics with its high-definition view of the cold Universe. Looking ahead another 15 years to the 2040s, many of the most transformative questions in the field will demand a step change in sensitivity and angular resolution at these critical wavelengths. While major upgrades such as the ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade will significantly enhance ALMA’s capabilities in the coming decade, addressing these longer-term challenges will ultimately require a next-generation facility.

Key science drivers span galaxy and black hole growth from cosmic dawn (z ~ 20), the evolution of the cosmic baryon cycle, and the formation of planetary systems and complex chemistry. In parallel, the physics of the extreme Universe—including transients, gravitational-wave follow-up, and event horizon-scale black hole imaging—is a major frontier in the era of time-domain and multi-messenger astronomy.

In this context, and in response to ESO’s Expanding Horizons initiative to identify its next major ground-based facility for the 2040s, the community-led ALMA2040 initiative is developing a science-driven reference design for a next-generation interferometric facility that builds on ALMA’s legacy while opening entirely new discovery space. ALMA2040 combines high-fidelity imaging across a vast range of spatial scales with transformative gains in sensitivity and operational flexibility, enabling a fundamental leap in our understanding of the cold Universe.

Speaker: Jacqueline Hodge

11:50 The nanohertz gravitational wave sky

Gravitational waves at nanohertz frequencies offer a unique view of the universe on its largest scales, probing supermassive black hole binary populations, galaxy evolution, and potentially exotic cosmological processes. Pulsar timing arrays detect these waves by monitoring the arrival times of radio pulses from ensembles of millisecond pulsars with extraordinary precision over years to decades. Multiple international collaborations have now confirmed a stochastic gravitational wave background in their data, opening an entirely new branch of astronomy. Moving beyond detection toward characterizing the spectrum and resolving individual sources of this signal requires more pulsars, better sensitivity, and longer baselines. The gamma ray pulsar timing array adds a complementary and independent pathway, leveraging pulsars across the full sky with a fundamentally different set of instrumental and astrophysical systematics. My group at ASTRON is leading this science at the frontier, advancing detection techniques and sensitivity analysis across both radio and gamma ray datasets. In this talk, I will present the current state of the art in nanohertz gravitational wave detection, discuss how next generation radio facilities will transform our ability to grow pulsar ensembles and resolve individual sources, and argue that upgrades to the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope can play a critical role in these efforts.

Speaker: Aditya Parthasarathy

12:00 → 13:00 Lunch

13:00 → 14:30 LSRI WSRT Roadmap proposal: Progress to a proposal

13:00 Introduction: Background and where we are now

Speaker: Violette Impellizzeri

13:10 International landscape

Speaker: Joeri van Leeuwen

13:20 System description and observing modes

Speaker: Andre Gunst

13:30 VLBI Working Group

Speaker: Benito Marcote

13:40 Time domain + transients (inlcuding lightning)WG

Speaker: Antonia Rowlinson

13:50 HI and Our Galaxy WGs

Speaker: TBC

14:00 The Sun, Space, and Future technologies & algorithms WGs

14:10 Education WG

14:20 Questions

14:30 → 15:00 Coffee: Afternoon

15:00 → 16:00 LSRI WSRT Roadmap proposal: Discussion

16:00 → 17:00 Borrel