E-Mail IMAGE: The entire arc of Milky Way, full of gas and dust, star clusters and emission nebulae, is a luminous background for the ESO-operated Very Large Telescope (VLT). view more Credit: M. Claro/ESO. Until now, Europe has had two major collaborative networks for ground-based astronomy, one in the optical wavelength domain and the other in the radio-wave domain. OPTICON and RadioNet have now come together to form Europe's largest ground-based astronomy collaborative network. Launched with funding to the tune of €15 million under the H2020 programme, the project aims to harmonise observational methods and tools, and provide access to a wider range of astronomy facilities.