2022 News

What happens when a dying star flies too close to a supermassive black hole? In some extremely rare cases, the supermassive black hole launches “relativistic jets”—beams of matter traveling close to the speed of light—after destroying a star. Using NOEMA and several other observatories, astronomers just got the chance to observe one of these rare cosmic events.

On 18th and 19th October 2022 the IRAM program committee met in Grenoble to discuss NOEMA and 30m proposals submitted for the winter semester 2022/233. The discussions were organized in two panels which were chaired by Amelie Saintonge (University College London, United Kingdom) and Dmitry Semenov (MPIA, Heidelberg, Germany). The authors of each proposal will be informed by letter which will include comments issued by the committee if there are any. As usual, the proposals were classified A (accepted), B (backup), and C (rejected).

NOEMA has now reached its full capacity. Only eight years after the first antenna was put into operation, this major astronomical project is now complete. Built and operated by IRAM and already the source of major discoveries, NOEMA is now poised to make unprecedented observations. Today, NOEMA has been inaugurated in the presence of Antoine Petit, President and CEO of the CNRS, Martin Stratmann, President of the MPG,...

We want to bring to your attention that a new Call for Proposals for IRAM telescopes is now available: A detailed description of the observing capabilities of the 30m telescope and the current status of the NOEMA interferometer are given in two separate documents.

On July 21, 2022 the IRAM program committee met in a video conference to discuss 30m proposals submitted for a delta call for the months August to November of the summer semester 2022. The discussions were organized in 2 panels which were chaired by Amelie Saintonge (University College London, United Kingdom) and Dmitry Semenov (MPIA, Heidelberg, Germany). The authors of each proposal will be informed by letter which will include comments issued by the committee if there are any. As usual, the proposals were classified A (accepted), B (backup), and C (rejected).

The 11th IRAM millimeter interferometry school will be held November 21-25, 2022 at the IRAM headquarters (Grenoble, France). It is intended for students, post-docs and scientists who want to acquire a good knowledge of interferometry and data reduction techniques at millimeter wavelengths, with a special emphasis on the NOEMA interferometer and its new capabilities.

A special delta call for 30-meter proposals is available for the period August 1st to November 30, 2022. Proposal deadline is June 27, 2022.

Des astronomes ont dévoilé la première image du trou noir supermassif situé au centre de notre propre galaxie, la Voie lactée. Ce résultat apporte la preuve irréfutable que l'objet est bien un trou noir et fournit des indices précieux sur le fonctionnement de ces géants, dont on pense qu'ils se trouvent au centre de la plupart des galaxies. L'image a été produite par une équipe de recherche mondiale appelée Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, à partir des observations d'un réseau mondial de radiotélescopes dont le télescope de 30 mètres. Les résultats sont publiés dans The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the centre of most galaxies. The image was produced by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes including the IRAM 30-meter telescope.

The IRAM program committee convened via Zoom on April 25-27, 2022 to evaluate the proposals submitted for the summer 2022 scheduling period. The discussions were organized in 2 panels which were chaired by Amelie Saintonge (University College London, United Kingdom) and Dimitry Semenov (MPIA, Heidelberg, Germany). The authors of each proposal will be informed by letter which will include comments issued by the committee if there are any. As usual, the proposals were classified A (accepted), B (backup), and C (rejected).

Using NOEMA observations and archival data from several space- and ground-based observatories, an international team of astronomers has discovered a unique object in the early Universe that provides a crucial link between star-forming galaxies and the emergence of the earliest supermassive black holes. This object is the first of its kind to be discovered so early in the Universe’s history, and had been lurking unnoticed in one of the best-studied areas of the northern sky.

The IRAM conference “Multi-line Diagnostics of the Interstellar Medium” took finally place in Nice (France), from April 4-6, 2022, after a long period of travel restrictions and virtual meetings. More than 150 scientists from across the world attended the conference. It covered three days of contributed and invited talks, as well as posters, on topics related to data analysis of multi-line observations and theoretical modeling...

We want to bring to your attention that a new Call for Proposals for IRAM telescopes is now available: A detailed description of the observing capabilities of the 30m telescope and the current status of the NOEMA interferometer are given in two separate documents.

An international team of scientists used the Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) to study the cold gas and how it is impacted by the jets in a galaxy named B2 0258+35. They found the presence of fast outflowing cold gas in the central region of this galaxy. NOEMA's spatial resolution allowed to pinpoint...

An international group of astrophysicists has developed a new method of measuring the cosmic microwave background temperature of the young Universe only 880 million years after the Big Bang. It is the first time that the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation – a relic of the energy released by the Big Bang – has been measured at such an early epoch of the Universe.

On time for the start of the new year, NOEMA has reached its full sensitivity with the commissioning of its 12th Antenna. With this milestone, NOEMA observations of the celestial millimeter-wave radio spectrum will be of unprecedented quality, and will provide researchers in France, Germany, Spain and around the world the opportunity to study the physical and chemical processes driving the evolution of the cosmos from its very early phase until today in incredible detail.