If you have any new MERLIN and/or VLBI press releases please email details to merlin@jb.man.ac.uk to have them included below.
'Death Star'
galaxy Black hole fires at neighbouring galaxy
17th December 2007
Nuclear
explosion on dead star - astronomers probe
aftermath
20th July 2006
A team of astronomers from the UK and Germany have found that a nuclear explosion on the surface of a star 5,000 light years from Earth resulted in a blast wave moving at over 1,700 km per second (one thousand miles per second or almost four million miles per hour!). The discovery, reported in the 20th July issue of Nature, was made by bringing together many of the world's radio telescopes into arrays capable of seeing the aftermath of the explosion in incredible detail.
Upgraded MERLIN
spies cloud of alcohol spanning 288 billion miles
18th April 2006
Astronomers based at Jodrell Bank Observatory have discovered a giant bridge of methyl alcohol, spanning approximately 288 billion miles, wrapped around a stellar nursery. The gas cloud could help our understanding of how the most massive stars in our galaxy are formed.
Exploding Star
within a Star - a recurrent nova!
6th April 2006
On 12 February 2006, amateur astronomers reported that a faint star in the constellation of Ophiuchus had suddenly become clearly visible in the night sky without the aid of a telescope. Speaking today (Friday) at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting at Leicester, Professor Mike Bode of Liverpool John Moores University and Dr Tim O'Brien of The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory will present the latest results which are shedding new light on what happens when stars explode.
Radio
astronomy gets connected
25th May 2004
Work has started on the construction of an optical fibre network which will connect five radio telescopes to the giant 76-m Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory, operated by The University of Manchester in rural Cheshire. This e-MERLIN network will operate as a single radio telescope spanning 217 km, with unprecedented sensitivity provided by the enormous data rates carried by the optical fibres.
