The Sharpest View of the Universe: New Frontiers in Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry

Recent progress in Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry has brought the technique to a new frontier. This technique provides the highest resolution in astronomy. Challenging observations are performed at very high frequencies, where the effects of the changing atmosphere together with the lower sensitivity of the receivers make observations much more difficult. A new calibration technique has been developed at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn to perform successful observations at a wavelength of 3 millimeter by extrapolating quasi-simultaneous observations at lower frequencies. Another spectacular result is the measurement, for first the time, of the motion of a neighbour galaxy from very precise astrometric observations. The motion of the galaxy M33 in the Local Group was successfully determined with micro-arcsecond precision. In both cases, the results were obtained by graduate students in the framework of the International Max Planck Research School for Radio and Infrared Interferometry.