AstroFlash

AstroFlash

Tracing back the fastest radio bursts with the highest precision

Who Are We The Project What We Do Outcome

The Research Group

AstroFlash is supported by a research group of PhD students and postdocs hosted at ASTRON, JIVE and the University of Amsterdam and built by Jason Hessels. The researchers are experts on both time- and image-domain analyses of radio observations both from single dish and interferometers, from low frequencies to very long baseline interferometry. AstroFlash widely uses the antennas from the European VLBI Network to precisely localize Fast Radio Bursts and study their emission and environments.

AstroFlash Project

This is a NWO Vici grant awarded byJason Hessels (ASTRON and University of Amsterdam) entitled "AstroFlash: probing the extremes of the Universe at high time and spatial resolution''. The Vici grants provide researchers with 1.5 MEur to explore an innovative research line over the course of 5 years (2020-2025). With the grant, Hessels will build a research group of PhD students and postdocs hosted at ASTRON, JIVE and the University of Amsterdam.

Science Motivation

AstroFlash is focused on the precise localization of dozens of repeating Fast Radio Bursts, and thereby come to a deeper understanding of what produces these fascinating astronomical signals. The FRB phenomenon was discovered in 2007. Though the FRBs remain mysterious, astronomers have demonstrated that these millisecond-duration flashes of radio light originate from distant galaxies. Whatever is producing the FRBs is thus exceptionally energetic and unlike anything we have studied before. The FRBs therefore hold great scientific promise to give us new insights into the extremes of the Universe. They are also a unique tool to probe the otherwise invisible material within and between galaxies.

Publications and code return

AstroFlash is producing an impressive number of scientific results. Many publciations are being published in leading journals, as you can see in the results section. Additionally, AstroFlash significantly contributes with code and tooling developments to the Fast Radio Burst community. We host the AstroFlash GitHub page where these tools are available for the community.