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Jason Hessels

The Vici grants provide researchers with €1.5 million to explore an innovative research line over the course of five years. With the grant, Hessels will build a research group of PhD students and postdocs hosted at ASTRON, JIVE and the University of Amsterdam.  Hessels' previous research activities have been funded, in part, by NWO Veni and Vidi grants, which together with the Vici comprise the 'NWO Talent Programme'.

In the AstroFlash project, Hessels will use the European VLBI Network - a global array of radio telescopes - to precisely localise the positions of fast radio bursts (FRBs). 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.

Only two FRBs precisely localised

Identifying the host galaxies of FRBs is critical both for understanding their nature as well as using them as astrophysical probes. To date, only two repeating FRB sources have been precisely localised - most recently, FRB 180916.J0158+65, where EVN observations were used to localise the source to a relatively nearby spiral galaxy.

FRB 180916.J0158 + 65 2 is one of two repeating FRB-sources that have recently been localised

With the AstroFlash team, Hessels aims to precisely localise dozens of repeating FRBs, and thereby come to a deeper understanding of what produces these fascinating astronomical signals.