New Scientist: A radio telescope that spans four continents has been set up for the first time.

In an observational run conducted in May, antennas in North America, South America, Europe and Africa all pointed in the same direction. Signals were fed by fibre optics to create real-time images at a hub in the Netherlands..

Recently, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico joined a project called Electronic Very Long Baseline Interferometry (e-VLBI), which can make temporary radio telescopes that rival the size of the Earth.

Its size allows the array to image objects – like the bright 'afterglow' formed when a high-speed jet of matter from a gamma-ray burst slams into its surroundings – that just look like points to individual radio telescopes, says Chris Salter of Arecibo.