On August 21 – 23, Engineering Research Institute of Ventspils University of Applied Sciences “Ventspils International Radioastronomy Centre” organized 6th annual scientific conference “Baltic Applied Astroinformatics and Space data Processing 2019”. This year the conference was attended by a record amount – 55 participants, who made a total of 43 scientific presentations.

Organizers had invited six world-class scientists to be a keynote speaker – Leonid Gurvits (NL), Dmitry Wiebe (RUS), Vasily Beskin (RUS), Oleg Ulyanov (UKR), Gino Tuccari (ITA) and Francisco Colomer (NL). In their presentations they talked about future applications for VLBI technology, radio pulsars, evolution of astrochemistry and the planets, low-frequency radio astronomical instrumentation and its data processing techniques. Representatives from the Ministry of Education and Science – Lana Franceska Dreimane and Kaspars Karolis, representatives from Ventspils University College, Electronic Communications Office of Latvia, as well as guests from other organizations in Latvia participated in the opening event of the conference. The conference was attended by scientists from 8 countries – Latvia, Estonia, Italy, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Russia and Ukraine.

The top 20 scientific articles are planned to be published in two journals, articles on the development of scientific instruments will be published in the Latvian Journal of Physics and Technical Sciences and articles on research in fundamental astronomy and astrophysics will be published in Astronomical and Astrophysical Transactions.

The conference participants had the opportunity to take a tour of the Ventspils University Radio Telescope Complex in Irbene, where they learned about one of the strongest astronomical instruments in the Baltic region, the 32-meter radio telescope of the Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Center and the new LOFAR station. The LOFAR station of Latvia is integrated into the International network or ILT (International’s LOFAR Telescope), increasing distance between stations up to 2000 km. This distance or baselines sets the resolution of the LOFAR ILT telescope.

Most of the reports in the conference were related to these instruments and their use in cooperative surveillance, such as the very long base interferometry (VLBI) observations with high-resolution.



Cooperation partners from both East and West see the Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Center as a technological, educational and scientific “bridge” between West and East.

Photos from the conference can be found here.

For more information: baasp2019@venta.lv; 

This conference was supported by the European Regional Development Fund projects No. 1.1.1.5/18/I/009 “Support to the Ventspils University of Applied Sciences in preparation of international cooperation projects for research and Innovation” and No. 1.1.1.5/18/A/019 “Further development of VIRAC Institutional and Scientific Capacity”