LOFAR Overview Paper

The LOFAR overview paper is now in press at Astronomy and Astrophysics. You can read all about it in this ASTRON press release, and download the paper itself from the arxiv:1305:3550.

LOFAR discovers new giant galaxy in all-sky survey

A team of astronomers led by ASTRON astronomer Dr. George Heald has discovered a previously unknown gigantic radio galaxy, using initial images from a new, ongoing all-sky radio survey. The galaxy was found using the powerful International LOFAR Telescope (ILT), built and designed by ASTRON. The team is currently performing LOFAR's first all-sky imaging survey, the Multi-frequency Snapshot Sky Survey (MSSS). While browsing the first set of MSSS images, Dr. Heald identified a new source the size of the full moon projected on the sky. The radio emission is associated with material ejected from one member of an interacting galaxy triplet system tens to hundreds of millions of years ago. The physical extent of the material is much larger than the galaxy system itself, extending millions of light years across intergalactic space. The MSSS survey is still ongoing, and is poised to discover many new sources like this one.

Overlay of the new GRG (blue-white colors) on an optical image from the
Digitized Sky survey. The inset shows the central galaxy triplet (image
from Sloan Digital Sky Survey). The image is about 2 Mpc across.

The new galaxy is a member of a class of objects called Giant Radio Galaxies (GRGs). GRGs are a type of radio galaxy with extremely large physical size, suggesting that they are either very powerful or very old. LOFAR is an effective tool to find new GRGs like this one because of its extreme sensitivity to such large objects, combined with its operation at low frequencies that are well suited to observing old sources.

The center of the new GRG is associated with one member of a galaxy triplet known as UGC 09555. The central galaxy is located at a redshift of z=0.054536, or 750 million light years from Earth. The central radio source was previously known and has a flat radio spectrum, typical of giant radio galaxies.

LOFAR's MSSS survey is a concerted effort to image the entire northern sky at very low radio frequencies, between 30 and 160 MHz (wavelengths from 2m to 10m). The primary aim of the survey is to perform an initial shallow scan of the sky, in order to create an all-sky model that will support the calibration of much deeper observations. It is comparable in sensitivity and angular resolution to previous surveys with ‘classical' radio telescopes like the Very Large Array (VLA) in the USA, ASTRON's Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India. MSSS is unique in that it operates at substantially lower frequencies, and is therefore poised to uncover new sources that were missed by previous surveys. Its broad bandwidth coverage is also novel in all-sky radio surveys, and will be used to provide additional information about the detected objects.

The international team of astronomers that is performing the MSSS survey is made up of about fifty members from various institutes, mostly in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Poland, France and Italy.

End of press release

For more information please contact:

Femke Boekhorst, PR & Communication. E-mail: boekhorst@astron.nl. Phone: +31 521 595 204.

Dr. George Heald, astronomer. E-mail: heald@astron.nl. Phone: +31 521 595 100.

More information about MSSS can be found on the ASTRON website: http://www.astron.nl/radio-observatory/lofar-msss/lofar-msss

International LOFAR Telescopes Call for Proposal

ASTRON today released the first open call for proposals to use the International LOFAR Telescope.

New Map of the International LOFAR Telescope

Here is a great new map of the International LOFAR Telescope which has been made by ASTRON. It's available with or without the international stations labelled. (Click on the caption for the highest resolution versions hosted at ASTRON's page of LOFAR pictures).

The International LOFAR Telescope. Credit: ASTRON

The International LOFAR Telescope: Credit ASTRON

Good News for Irish LOFAR

Some good news for iLOFAR - the planned Irish contribution to LOFAR appeared in the Irishtimes.com today.

Click here to download the i-LOFAR brochure.

Test of Irish times article:

Desmond to invest in radio telescope for Birr 
by NIAMH DORNAN 


DERMOT DESMOND has pledged financial backing for plans to build a powerful new telescope that will allow scientists to eavesdrop on objects in space.

Mr Desmond met a group of Irish scientists last Friday to discuss the building of a state-of-the-art radio telescope at Birr Castle, Co Offaly. He agreed to provide some funding for the development of the project.

The telescope, costing €1.2 million, would be the biggest investment in Irish astronomical equipment since the building of the Great Leviathan Telescope by William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse, at Birr in the 1840s. It ranked as the largest telescope in the world for more than 70 years.

“We still have a ways to go to get to €1.2 million to purchase and install the station, but is a step in the right direction,” said Prof Peter Gallagher of Trinity College Dublin, who is a member of the consortium behind the plans.

The telescope would consist of a number of antennae to detect low frequency radio waves such as those emitted by ancient astronomical objects formed shortly after the Big Bang. Up to 50 radio telescopes of this type already exist – in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, and the UK.

These facilities have been linked together in a network called the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), which join to form an even more powerful telescope. Increasing the overall size of the network by building a station in Ireland would enable LOFAR to image distant objects in much finer detail.

The Irish station would be called I-LOFAR, and would be connected to the central processing centre in the Netherlands using a high speed fibre optic network. This connection would be 100 times faster than broadband speeds in Ireland, said Prof Gallagher.

“We have an opportunity to make an investment of €1.2 million to be part of a €150 million European project,” he said. “With I-LOFAR we would have something tangible here in Ireland – not in Chile, or Australia – that the public would be able to come to see.”

Birr Castle was an ideal location for a new station, he said. Ireland is extremely radio-quiet compared with other European countries. In rural areas such as Birr, the very faint radio signals coming from objects from the early universe would be detectable, as there is very little interference here.

The estimated cost of the project for the first five years is €3 million. This would include the expansion of the Science Centre in Birr. Fáilte Ireland has expressed support for the plan, which could increase the appeal of Birr Castle and the area for tourists.

“There is the potential for at least one Nobel Prize in this project,” Prof Gallagher said.

Current Map of International LOFAR Telescope

Using the LOFAR Status Map as a basis, I just made this up-to-date map of the locations of LOFAR stations across Europe.

LOFAR stations across Europe. May 2012. Credit: Google Maps, ASTRON. 

Nice Animations about Building LOFAR

Some nice animations about how LOFAR works and building LOFAR in the below movie (in Dutch). The English caption for the movie reads

A short animation consisting of all animations we have made for the 'Building LOFAR' documentary. The animations show how this new and innovative telescope works and waht is is capable off. The voice-over is Dutch in this case. English is also available and will be uploaded seperately as soon as possible. For more info and detals please visit bluemedia.nl

LOFAR in Science, Nature and Scientific American

This image was picked up as a "Science Shot" from Science. It's an X-ray/Radio image of Cygnus A. The blue shows X-ray emission from Chandra indicating hot gas around the galaxy. The orange is a new radio image from LOFAR which shows how the jets are interacting with this gas. Credit: (c) J. McKean and M. Wise, ASTRON

Following the press release from AAS219, LOFAR has been covered in stories in Nature (Radio Array Starts Work, 10 Jan 2012), Science (Science Shot: New Telescope Captures Supermassive Black Hole, 10 Jan 2012), and Scientific American (a reproduction of the Nature article retitled as Radio Array Starts to Detect Whispers from Universe, 10 Jan 2012)

International LOFAR Telescope has press conference at the American Astronomical Society Meeting

Yesterday evening (UK time) scientists from the LOFAR headquarters at ASTRON had a press conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting happening this week in Austin, Texas. They presented some of the first science results from the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) and announced the start of the first All-Sky Survey. You can watch the below webcast of this press conference on the AAS website.




The below is the press release which went out at the same time as the conference. It is also available in Dutch at the NOVA (Nerderlandse Onderzoekschool Voor Astronomie) website.

International LOFAR Radio Telescope presents first science, kicks off All-Sky Survey 

World’s most complex radio telescope begins its first low frequency survey of the sky, as it prepares to open its doors to the international astronomy community this year. 

Scientists from the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) today announced the kick-off of the project’s first all-sky survey at low radio frequencies and its first open call for observing proposals from the international astronomical community. LOFAR, the Low Frequency Array, is an innovative radio telescope built in the Netherlands and across northern Europe. LOFAR will make the still largely unexplored low-frequency radio sky accessible to astronomers for the first time. It will search for the first stars and black holes in the universe, hunt for cosmic radio bursts, pulsars, and ultra-high energy cosmic particles, study the sun and planets, and explore cosmic magnetic fields.

Cygnus A radio galaxy 

LOFAR is being used to study supermassive black holes and the affect they have on their local environment. A classic example of an active galaxy is Cygnus A, which lies in a nearby cluster of galaxies at a distance of about 700 million lightyears. At the center of this galaxy is a powerful active nucleus that emits jets of plasma at relativistic speeds. An early LOFAR image at 240 MHz shown here that these jets extend far beyond the stellar part of the galaxy, up to 200 thousand light years from the center, before abruptly interacting with the intra-clust (Image Credits:  J. McKean and M. Wise, ASTRON) 

The project will complete its hardware construction phase in 2012 and open its doors for researchers from all over the world. Early science results from the commissioning phase of LOFAR were presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas. 

The first major observing project of LOFAR will be the Multi-frequency Snapshot Sky Survey (MSSS). The survey will ultimately yield the most accurate catalogue of radio sources ever produced at these very long radio wavelengths. Designed to observe light at radio wavelengths from 2 to 20 meters, LOFAR can observe multiple, large areas of the sky simultaneously. This means it can survey the radio sky faster. “With LOFAR, we can systematically explore the low-frequency radio sky like never before and see, for example, powerful black holes throughout the entire universe.” says MSSS Project Leader, Dr. George Heald. This initial survey is expected to take several months to complete, although final processing of the data will likely take longer. Much deeper, follow-up surveys are also planned. 

When it opens later this year to the science community, LOFAR will already offer some unique capabilities to radio astronomers. LOFAR is a fully digital radio telescope that uses fiber optic cables to connect more than 20,000 low-cost antennas via the internet into a single large telescope. These antennas are grouped together into 48 separate stations distributed over the northeastern part of the Netherlands as well as in Germany, France, the UK, and Sweden. Funding for additional stations has also recently been approved in Poland. Signals from these stations are combined using an IBM BlueGene/P supercomputer to create a telescope with a collecting area of 12 football fields and a resolution equivalent to a telescope 1,000 km in diameter. The combination of many antennas and large effective size gives LOFAR unprecedented sensitivity and resolving power at long radio wavelengths.

The first science team within the LOFAR project counting on this increased sensitivity to achieve their scientific goals is the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) project, led by Prof. Ger de Bruyn. The EoR team hopes to detect extremely feeble signals from the highly redshifted neutral hydrogen 21cm emission line produced during the earliest phase of the Universe before the first stars and galaxies formed.  LOFAR’s large collecting area makes it uniquely suited to detect these extremely faint signals. According to Prof. de Bruyn, “Detection of signals from highly redshifted neutral hydrogen, emitted during the childhood years of the Universe, would be a watershed moment in cosmology.” If the EoR observation detection proves successful, the results will reveal detailed information on the first stars and galaxies born in the universe.  Several pilot observations by the EoR team have already yielded some of the deepest LOFAR images yet, and the most sensitive ever at these wavelengths. Even deeper observations are planned for the coming year to push closer to the required detection sensitivity of the EoR signal itself. 

EoR deep field 

Deepest image ever produced at 2 m wavelength. The image shows a glimpse of the very distant, very young universe. Every dot in this image is associated with a galaxy hundreds of millions, even billions of light years away. An additional few hundred hours of follow up observations will eventually lead to detection of radio waves from the moment the first Galaxies began to shine. The image, recorded at 140 MHz, is 13x13 degrees across, showing details of only 6 arc seconds with a noise level of 120 micro-Jansky per beam. The effective total exposure time is 10 hours. (Image Credits:  S. Yatawatta, ASTRON) 

Low-frequency radio imaging is particularly challenging due to the Earth’s variable ionosphere and interference from man-made radio transmitters, such as FM radio stations. “The first phase of commissioning has demonstrated that a fully digital telescope can overcome these obstacles, which have plagued low-frequency astronomy for so long.”, says Heino Falcke, chair of the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT).  “After ten years of hard work on this project, it is fantastic to see that it actually works.”  

LOFAR’s unique capabilities are already proving useful for researchers studying pulsars, the highly magnetized and rapidly rotating neutron stars formed during the gravitational collapse of a massive star following a supernova. Many of these objects give off brief but intense bursts of radio emission lasting in some cases only millionths of a second. LOFARs sensitivity and highly accurate clocks make it possible to study pulsars over the lowest 4 octaves of the observable radio spectrum all at once. When combined with data from other radio telescopes operating at shorter wavelengths, LOFAR observations can isolate the origin of pulsar’s radio emission to within 100km above the magnetic poles of the star. LOFAR’s large field of view will also be used to perform efficient surveys to study known pulsars and detect new ones. 

LOFAR will offer its unique scientific capabilities to the astronomical community starting in May with the announcement of its first open call for observing projects. A fraction of the available observing time for the coming year will be allocated to a number of Key Science Projects with the remaining time available for open-sky observing projects. “LOFAR really is the most versatile radio telescope in the world. When we open the doors in May, this amazing new facility will be available to any scientist in the world to use.”, said LOFAR Project Scientist, Dr. Michael Wise. 

International LOFAR Telescope Operations are coordinated by ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, on behalf of a consortium consisting of the Netherlands, Germany, France, the UK, and Sweden.  Many of the technological solutions developed for LOFAR, in particular the calibration of phased-arrays as well as large-scale data transport and processing, will be highly relevant for future radio telescope projects such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). The SKA is a 1.5 billion euro, global science project to build the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope over the next decade. LOFAR represents the first of several SKA technology pathfinder projects to come online. 

LOFAR Session at NAM 2012

The UK National Astronomy Meeting, to be held in Manchester in March 2012 will host a session on "LOFAR, the LOw Frequency ARray: Ongoing Developments and Early Results" preliminarily scheduled for 10am on Thursday 29th March 2012.

This session will be run by LOFAR scientists, Mario M. Bisi (Institute of Mathematics and Physics, Aberystwyth University, UK), Michael W. Wise (Astronomy Group, ASTRON (Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy), The Netherlands), Philip Best (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, UK), Benjamin W. Stappers (The School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester, UK), Peter T. Gallagher (School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), and and Marcus Braggen (School of Engineering & Science, Jacobs University, Germany), the session has the following abstract:

"The LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) is a next-generation radio telescope which utilises thousands of stationary dipoles and tiles to observe celestial phenomena. This session is intended for the broader community to learn about the developments of LOFAR including updates on the status of the system and its current scientific capabilities, the early science results from all aspects of its applications and operation, as well as the upcoming opportunities for general "open skies" observing.With its dense core array and interferometric baselines of up to 1,000 km, LOFAR has the potential to achieve both unparalleled sensitivity (sub-mJy) and spatial resolution (sub-arcsecond) in this largely-unexplored low-frequency radio regime (~10 MHz to 250 MHz). Areas of science which can be explored with LOFAR include, but are not limited to, the Epoch of Re-ionisation (EoR), Pulsars, Transients, Cosmic Rays, Magnetism, deep Extra-Galactic Surveys, and also studies of the Sun, the Solar Atmosphere/Solar Wind, Space Weather, and the Earth's Ionosphere. In summary, the session is designed for showcasing LOFAR's scientific potential and progress to date. The session should include a LOFAR overview and specifics of LOFAR commissioning, current status, scientific and technical capabilities, and upcoming opportunities. We solicit contributions from any/all of the science areas that will be covered by the observational capabilities of LOFAR."

Welcome to Swedish LOFAR; making LOFAR even bigger

The Swedish LOFAR station in Onsala is to be opened on Monday, joining stations all over Europe to make the International LOFAR Telescope even bigger. Below is the press release from Onsala Space Observatory.

Swedes Make World's Largest Telescope Bigger

The 192 radio antennas that make up Onsala’s Lofar station cover an area the size of a soccer pitch. Credit: Onsala Space Observatory/Leif Helldner

On Monday, Sweden’s Minister for Education and Research, Jan Björklund, will open Onsala Space Observatory’s newest telescope. Part of LOFAR, the world’s largest radio telescope, it is the biggest telescope built in Sweden in the last 35 years. LOFAR will map radio signals which have travelled across the universe for billions of years. Scientists expect LOFAR to answer questions about the nature of our universe.

LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) is a new kind of radio telescope. It can see radio waves with low frequencies, similar to those that give us FM radio. Rather than collecting signals from individual radio sources, LOFAR continuously monitors large swathes of sky. Lofar is more sensitive to the longest observable radio waves than any other telescope. It can see many billions of light years out into space, back to the time before the first stars formed, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

The 192 new radio antennas at Onsala’s LOFAR station look modest enough. But the radio signals they collect will be linked together with 47 similar stations over the whole of Europe, and sent over Internet to a central supercomputer in the Netherlands. This means huge amount of data traffic: the equivalent of over 7000 DVD films per day just from the Swedish station. The telescope creates images of the sky using a unique combination of computer power and innovative software. Together, LOFAR’s antennas form a single telescope with a diameter of 1300 kilometres.

Hans Olofsson is director of Onsala Space Observatory and professor at Chalmers.

“For astronomers like me, LOFAR means that we can see far enough to be able to study the universe’s early history. We want to discover traces of the clouds of hydrogen gas that filled the universe 13 billion years ago, and find out just why today’s universe looks the way it does,” he says.

Scientists expect LOFAR to discover hitherto unknown types of astronomical objects. It will also investigate the environments of black holes, find extreme galaxies and pulsars, and search for planets around other stars.

Onsala Space Observatory was founded in 1949 and was led for three decades by Professor Olof Rydbeck. Since its inception the observatory has contributed to the forefront of research in radio astronomy, both through interpretation of observations and developing new technology. Since 1990 the observatory is the Swedish National Facility for Radio Astronomy. It is financed by the Swedish Research Council and operated by Chalmers.

“Onsala Space Observatory has always been a prominent centre for radio astronomy research, and now it’s part of the world’s most exciting radio telescope. In the future we plan to develop the technology that makes Lofar unique when we build the next generation of radio telescopes, says René Vermeulen of Astron, the Netherlands national institute for radio astronomy, and director of the International LOFAR Telescope.

LOFAR is one of many examples of Onsala Space Observatory’s increasing involvement in international projects. Chalmers is one of three international partners in the submillimetre telescope Apex in Chile, which recently discovered hydrogen peroxide in space. Last winter Chalmers delivered sensitive new receivers to the Alma Observatory, the world’s largest astronomy project, currently being built in Chile’s Atacama desert. The observatory is also planning for the radio observatory SKA (Square Kilometre Array), to be built in Australia or South Africa, in which LOFAR’s new technology will be developed even further. SKA is expected to give answers about the origins of both the universe itself and life in space.

“Space research is also critical for our understanding of the earth and its climate, and it invariably leads to spin-off effects. International facilities like Lofar foster strong cooperation across both scientific and cultural borders,” says Karin Markides, President of Chalmers.

“I believe LOFAR in particular will have great importance for our ability to handle very large amounts of data,” she adds.

During the inauguration ceremony at Onsala Space Observatory on Monday Minister of Education and Research Jan Björklund will take some of the first ever images of the sky with the Swedish LOFAR station. He will also visit the station together with around a hundred invited guests.


For more information see here. 

LOFAR related postdocs at CEA Saclay (near Paris)

Another job advert for two postdoc positions at CEA Saclay near Paris working on detection of radio transients - including for the LOFAR Transient Key Project.

AAS Job Register posting (copied below).

Applications are invited for two postdoctoral positions in signal processing/data analysis for an initial period of 2 years, with the UnivEarthsS LabEx program.

The astrophysics division of CEA Saclay is offering two positions to work with Professor Stéphane Corbel on radio transients in close collaboration with Jean-Luc Starck. Over the next decade, a combination of increased sensitivity, larger field of view, and algorithmic developments will open up the time domain to a wide range of astronomical fields, from stellar flares and supernovae to neutron-star and black-hole births, quakes and instabilities. Radio astronomy is leading this effort and transient science is identified as a key goal for LOFAR (Europe), ASKAP (Autralia) and MeerKAT (South Africa), the precursor instruments of the major international SKA facility to be developed for 2020+.

The applicant will work in one of these related topics:
  -Transient search in one of the affiliated key projects: TKP (LOFAR), ThunderKAT (MeerKAT), VAST (ASKAP),
  - Optimization of current methods and development of near real-time detection pipelines,
  - Characterization of transients and identification at other wavelengths,
  - Image reconstruction from undersampled Fourier measurements.

Minimum qualifications include an undergraduate degree or higher in astronomy, physics, computer science, statistics or related field. The candidate must have a strong motivation in developing statistical methods and applying them in large international projects. CEA Saclay ( http://irfu.cea.fr/Sap/en/ ) is located 25km south of Paris, near Universities and other research centers. The astrophysics division gathers more than 150 faculty and staff members, studying a large range of astrophysical problems.

The positions are initially for two years and the starting dates should be between early Fall 2011 and early 2012. Ample funding for conferences, collaborations, personal equipment and publication is available. Applicants should submit by email resume, bibliography and a brief research plans to Stéphane Corbel (stephane.corbel@cea.fr) and Jean-Luc Starck (jstarck@cea.fr) and arrange for three reference letters to be sent as well before 31 August 2011.
 

Postdoc position in LOFAR long-baseline development and implementation (Bonn)

Another LOFAR related postdoc position advertised this week - this one in Bonn. Text below taken direct from the job advert.

Postdoc position in LOFAR long-baseline development and implementation (Bonn)

LOFAR www.lofar.org is an innovative, low-frequency, multi-station aperture array telescope that is using new technologies and novel software approaches. LOFAR has entered its commissioning phase and started producing unique data in the relatively unexplored spectral window below 200 MHz.

The Argelander-Institute for Astronomy at the University of Bonn is offering a (max.) three-year postdoc/software developer position for long-baseline calibration development and implementation to start as soon as possible. The international baselines of LOFAR require special calibration schemes that are not fully included in the general calibration pipeline, yet. Sophisticated fringe-fitting methods that take into account the special polarisation properties of the system have to be developed for this purpose. Current algorithms have to be extended and added to the calibration pipeline.
Long-baseline commissioning is continuously making progress,

see ;http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.4358; http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~wucknitz/wiki/doku.php/lbg:start

Contributing to these efforts will be part of the project. Despite the emphasis of technical development work, unique science projects will be possible as well. Particularly the long baselines of LOFAR are probing an entirely new parameter space with many important discoveries to be expected. LOFAR has already improved the resolution of low-frequency VLBI imaging by an order of magnitude. Appointees are expected to spend 50% of their time on astronomical research (which would preferably be related to LOFAR) and 50% on development work.

Relevant qualifications are experience in radio interferometry beyond the bare user level, particularly on very long baselines, a mathematical understanding of the methods involved, and programming expertise. This experience should generally be proven by a PhD in astronomy, physics or another relevant field, even though a Master's degree may be sufficient in particular cases. The ability to work independently but in cooperation with an international team of astronomers and developers, as well as excellent communication skills and a good command of the English language are essential.

Applications (preferably by email) should include a CV, a statement of interests and experience, the prefered starting date, and three letters of reference. Applicants of any nationality are eligible to apply. The University of Bonn is an equal opportunities employer. Deadline for full consideration is 15 October 2011. Applications may still be accepted until the position is filled.

The remuneration is based on a public pay scale (generally TV-L/E13) and subject to age and experience. Comprehensive benefits include paid vacation, sick leave, parental leave, and social security benefits (contributions to unemployment and health insurance as well as retirement scheme).

This project is part of wider LOFAR efforts by a consortium of astronomical institutes in Germany. Positions in other fields (to be announced on the AAS job register in September) are available as well. Applicants who would like to have their application considered also for other locations should state this in the cover letter.

More information is available on request.

Dr. Olaf Wucknitz
Argelander-Institute for Astronomy
Auf dem Huegel 71
53121 Bonn
Germany

email: wucknitz@astro.uni-bonn.de
http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~wucknitz/

LOFAR related Postdoc Position at ICG, Portsmouth

The University of Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) is advertising a postdoctoral position for

Development of software to incorporate the international baselines of the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) into the LOFAR core array pipeline and data reduction framework. 

For more details see the job advert.

LOFAR-UK Becomes a Full Member of the International LOFAR Telescope

At a recent meeting of the management of the Internatonal LOFAR Telescope, LOFAR-UK and STFC  signed the contract which governs the running the Chilbolton LOFAR Station (UK608) for 5 years and the transfer of data to The Netherlands for use in ILT array wide observations. 

Following this, and other similar contracts signed by the other international partners in the ILT (France, Germany and Sweden), all four international partners in LOFAR were formally welcomed as full members of the ILT, and given commemorative certificates. 

This is a significant milestone for LOFAR-UK guaranteeing UK scientists access to the agreed upon fraction of LOFAR data and many congratulations are due to the management of LOFAR-UK for the completion of this stage of the project.

From left to right shown are: FLOW representative Michel Tagger, GLOW delegate to the meeting Anton Zensus, LOFAR-Sweden secretary John Conway, LOFAR-UK chairman Philip Best, NL-LAC delegate and ILT Board chairman Heino Falcke, ILT Director Rene Vemeulen, ASTRON delegate Mike Garrett, and NL-LAC delegate Ralph Wijers.

The above picture, from the ASTRON picture of the day for June 30th shows members of the board celebrating this event.


 The LOFAR stations provided by these international partners greatly improve the capabilities of the ILT, by extending the maximum baseline of the telescope and therefore increasing resolution significantly (as was demonstrated by the first light image including 3 international stations). 

 Further countries are continuing to work towards obtaining funding for LOFAR stations and will hopefully join in the future extending the capabilities of the telescope even further. 

LOFAR on the Jodcast

You can listen to me on the May 2011 Extra Jodcast talking about LOFAR (among other things). I'm the first interview in the podcast.

How Does LOFAR Work (Parts 10 and 11) from the KAIRA blog

We're getting a bit behind in the series, but here are the next two installments from the KAIRA blog about how LOFAR works:

Part 10 : Multi-beam operations (explaining one of the techniques used in the press release about the first peer reviewed science results from LOFAR).

Part 11 : Ambiguities (about phase errors)

How does LOFAR Work Parts 8 and 9 (from the KAIRA blog)

Parts 8 and 9 of the series from the KAIRA blog on how LOFAR works, covering how the array is pointed as specific places on the sky:

8: Steering a Phased Array
9: Digital Beam Steering. 

How does LOFAR Work Part 7 (from the KAIRA blog)

Part 7 of the series from the KAIRA blog on how LOFAR works:

Phased Arrays.

How does LOFAR Work Part 6 (from the KAIRA blog)

And they've been busy over at KAIRA, here's also Part 6 in the series in how LOFAR works. Seems this is the end of the preamble, the real details will start soon.

Squinted Vision (about the need to steer radio dishes).