2017 News

Deux Service Nationaux d'Observation en soutien à l'IRAM sont labélisés par l'INSU: "IRAM/NOEMA" et "ALMA Regional Center".

IRAM, the Institute for Radio Astronomy in the Millimeter Range (Grenoble, France) has signed two cooperation agreements with the University of Nanjing (China) and the Purple Mountain Observatory (Chinese Academy of Sciences). The primary goal of these agreements is to strengthen cooperation in the Millimeter Astronomy, and in particular in the framework of NOEMA...

Astronomers have discovered the most distant quasar known, which is so far from us that its light has taken more than 13 billion years to reach us. We see this quasar as it was a mere 690 million years after the Big Bang, and its light carries valuable information about the early history of the universe...

We are very pleased to announce the successful implementation of the wideband high-performance correlator PolyFiX in concert with the nine antenna array. The commissioning of PolyFIX represents the next crucial milestone in the quest for ever higher sensitivity. The very first observations of a line survey at high-redshift in the 3mm-band are given below as a foretaste of NOEMA's full potential that is now within grasp.

The IRAM program committee convened in Grenoble on October 17 and 18 to evaluate the proposals submitted for the winter 2017/2018 scheduling period. The discussions were organized in 2 panels which were chaired by Hendrik Linz (MPIA, Heidelberg) and Ric Davies (MPE, Garching). The authors of each proposal will be informed shortly by email, including the comments issued by the committee. As usual, the proposals were classified A (accepted), B (backup), and C (rejected).

In the framework of the LabEx project FOCUS (Focal Plane Array for Universe Sensing), IRAM will participate to the MEMS & IMAGING Summit 2017 at MINATEC in Grenoble, from September 20 to 22. FOCUS is a French research project...

The new call for proposals for the winter 2017/2018 is available. A detailed description of the observing capabilities of the 30m telescope and the current status of the NOEMA interferometer are given...

NOEMA continues its successful array upgrade with the implementation of the 9th antenna this spring. Together with the installation of the new NOEMA wide band receivers in all existing 9 antennas, the array is ready for the installation and commissioning of the new NOEMA correlator Polyfix foreseen for the end of the summer...

The IRAM program committee convened in Granada on April 25 and 26 to evaluate the proposals submitted for the summer 2017 scheduling period. The discussions were organized in 2 panels which were chaired by Javier Goicoechea (ICMM-CSIC, Madrid) and Ric Davies (MPE, Garching). The authors of each proposal will be informed shortly by email, including the comments issued by the committee.

An international team of astronomers will join in April and try for the first time in the history of astronomy, to capture an image of the center of our galaxy, where a giant black hole lies. This worldwide project is called Event Horizon Telescope (EHT); it combines telescopes across four continents from Europe to the South Pole, through Chile and Hawaii. The IRAM 30-meter telescope is one of them...

Using the IRAM 30-meter radio-telescope, an international team of astronomers has obtained the most comprehensive radio-survey of the Orion B star-forming region, famous for hosting the iconic Horsehead and Flame nebulae. Through a careful dissection of the cloud into regions of different molecular composition, they shed new light on how the darkest and coldest inner parts give birth to new stars. Following mankind's tradition of associating characters with features on the sky, the radio astronomy view of Orion B seems to show the skeleton of a fighting Star Wars Jedi!

The IRAM 30-meter radiotelescope was used to lead a systematic search for molecules containing phosphorus (P) towards L1157-B1, a shock wave front created by the propagation of a supersonic jet emanating from a solar-type protostar. Several spectral lines of phosphorus mononitride (PN) were detected and, for the first time in a solar-type star-forming region, the lines of phosphorus monoxyde (PO), a molecule of high biological interest.

The new call for proposals for the summer 2017 is available. A detailed description of the observing capabilities of the 30m telescope and the current status of the NOEMA interferometer are given...

An international research team has discovered rare molecules in the envelope of the oxygen rich star IK Tau, confirming that this type of evolved star has a much more complex chemistry than expected. After several observing campaigns from 2009 to 2013 with the IRAM 30-meter telescope, the data revealed the presence of, approximately, 350 spectral emission lines that belong to nearly 20 molecular species bearing elements...

RadioNet, the European Programme for radio astronomy, has been awarded a grant of 10 million Euro for the next 4 years from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. As one of RadioNet's major partner institutions, IRAM will be the leading participant and coordinator of AETHRA, a joint research programme that will exploit cutting edge technologies for next generation receivers...

A team of researchers from the NIKA consortium has obtained for the first time an image of the gas velocity in a merging cluster of galaxies. These observations open a new way to study the formation of the largest structures in the Universe, formed through the most energetic events since the Big Bang.