On August 31st, 2024, the LOFAR radio telescope paused after 15 years of operations to undergo a major upgrade. In this upgrade, our lessons learned from that period are incorporated into new hardware, firmware, and software. Except for the antennas, almost everything is being replaced as we build LOFAR2.0: receiver units, digital beam formers, clock distribution, network infrastructure, the...
The mechanics of binary evolution remain largely invisible other than the luminosities that reach us. However, these luminosities are the end result of a chain of interdependent feedback processes spanning the entire binary system to accrete material from a still-evolving donor star. With recent developments a clear picture of this mass transfer is now possible. Only by tackling system...
The large-scale structure of the Universe encodes a wealth of information about cosmology and galaxy formation. For decades, two-point correlation functions have served as a cornerstone of this effort, distilling the complex distribution of matter into powerful statistical measures. These summary statistics underpin precision constraints on the standard cosmological model and provide key...
Water (H$_2$O) is key for habitability, but the delivery mechanism to (forming) planets is not yet well understood. The James Webb Space Telescope, especially through the MIRI instrument, can now study the planet-forming regions (inner few au) of disks around young stars. Hundreds of ro-vibrational (<10 $\mathrm{\mu}$m) and pure rotational (>10 $\mathrm{\mu}$m) transitions can probe the...
