Using the supersharp radio vision of the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array, astronomers have made the most precise measurement ever of the distance to a famous star-forming region.

Astronomers studying archival data from an Australian radio telescope have discovered a powerful, short-lived burst of radio waves that they say indicates an entirely new type of astronomical phenomenon.

High school students and teachers will join astronomers on the cutting edge of science under a program to be operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and West Virginia University, and funded by the National Science Foundation.

Astronomers have found an enormous hole in the Universe, nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies, and gas, and the mysterious, unseen dark matter.

The first of two ALMA transporters — unique vehicles designed to move high-tech radio-telescope antennas in the harsh, high-altitude environment of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array — has been completed and passed its initial operational tests.

Astronomers using data from the National Science Foundation’s Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope have found the largest negatively-charged molecule yet seen in space. The discovery of the third negatively-charged molecule, called an anion, in less than a year and the size of the latest anion will force a drastic revision of theoretical models of interstellar chemistry, the astronomers say.

A new book published by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory tells the story of the founding and early years of the Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia. But it was Fun: the first forty years of radio astronomy at Green Bank, is not a formal history, but rather a scrapbook of early memos, recollections, anecdotes and reports.

Associated Universities, Inc, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory have awarded the 2007 Karl G Jansky Lectureship to Professor Karl M Menten of the Max-Planck-Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, Germany.

Radio telescopes now in operation or under construction will be indispensible to scientists wrestling with the big, unanswered questions of 21st-Century astrophysics. That was the conclusion of a wide-ranging scientific meeting held in Charlottesville, Virginia, June 18-21, to mark the 50th anniversary of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is teaming with NASA’s upcoming Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope to allow astronomers to use both the orbiting facility and ground-based radio telescopes to maximize their scientific payoff.