Discuss LOFAR on Slashdot

There's a fairly active discussion of LOFAR going on in the comments of the Slashdot article about LOFAR which was posted yesterday. Just putting the link here in case anyone wants to join in.

LOFAR on Slashdot

First images from LOFAR including Chilbolton

Today a press release has gone out from the International partners involved in LOFAR describing the first images from the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) which includes data from our LOFAR-UK station in Chilbolton (and Nancay in France, Tautenberg in Germany and of course several Dutch Stations).

You can find the ASTRON release here.

This is the STFC release put out by LOFAR-UK (on the STFC website here).

Giant radio telescope goes multi-national – first images from LOFAR

In the quest to discover more about our Universe and the birth of stars and galaxies, a new UK telescope connected for the first time to others across Europe has delivered its first ‘radio pictures’. The images of the 3C196 quasar (a black hole in a distant galaxy) were taken in January 2011 by the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT). LOFAR (Low Frequency Array), which is co-ordinated by ASTRON in the Netherlands, is a network of radio telescopes designed to study the sky at the lowest radio frequencies accessible from the surface of the Earth with unprecedented resolution.

A close up of the quasar 3C196. Both images show the exact same patch of sky around the quasar. On the left is the image taken by the Dutch LOFAR telescopes; the image on the right was taken by the combined multi-national LOFAR telescopes which together provide a resolution as fine as 0.2 arcseconds, close to 1/10000 of the diameter of the moon. The two bright spots show the locations where two jets from the massive black hole in the centre of the galaxy are hitting other material in the galaxy which hosts the quasar’. Credit: Multi-national LOFAR commissioning teams led by Olaf Wucknitz (Argelander Institut für Astronomie, University of Bonn, Germany) and Reinout van Weeren (Leiden Observatory, University of Leiden).

The UK based telescope at STFC’s Chilbolton Observatory in Hampshire, is the western most ‘telescope station’ in LOFAR. The addition of Chilbolton to other stations in Europe makes the LOFAR array almost 1000 km wide – ten times as large as the original array in the Netherlands – and creates the largest telescope in the world.

View of the LOFAR site at STFC Chilbolton Observatory, with the antennas belonging to the Low Band Array (LBA) in the foreground.” Credit: STFC.

“This is a very significant event for the LOFAR project and a great demonstration of what the UK is contributing,” said Derek McKay-Bukowski, STFC/SEPnet Project Manager at LOFAR Chilbolton. “The new images are three times sharper than has been previously possible with LOFAR. LOFAR works like a giant zoom lens - the more radio telescopes we add, and the further apart they are, the better the resolution and sensitivity. This means we can see smaller and fainter objects in the sky which will help us to answer exciting questions about cosmology and astrophysics.”

A patch of the sky 15 degrees wide (as large as a thousand full moons) taken in a single shot by LOFAR. The image reveals the stunning variety of objects which surround the quasar 3C196.’ Credit: Multi-national LOFAR commissioning teams led by Olaf Wucknitz (Argelander Institut für Astronomie, University of Bonn, Germany) and Reinout van Weeren (Leiden Observatory, University of Leiden).

“This is fantastic”, said Professor Rob Fender, LOFAR-UK Leader from the University of Southampton. “Combining the LOFAR signals together is a very important milestone for this truly international facility. For the first time, the signals from LOFAR radio telescopes in the Netherlands, France, Germany and the United Kingdom have been successfully combined in the LOFAR BlueGene/P supercomputer in the Netherlands. The connection between the Chilbolton telescope and the supercomputer requires an internet speed of 10 gigabits per second - over 1000 times faster than the typical home broadband speeds," said Professor Fender. "Getting that connection working without a hitch was a great feat requiring close collaboration between STFC, industry, universities around the country, and our international partners.”

“The images show a patch of the sky 15 degrees wide (as large as a thousand full moons) centred on the quasar 3C196,” said Dr Philip Best, Deputy LOFAR-UK leader from the University of Edinburgh. “In visible light, quasar 3C196 (even through the Hubble Space Telescope) is a single point. By adding the international stations like the one at Chilbolton we reveal two main bright spots. This shows how the International LOFAR Telescope will help us learn about distant objects in much more detail.”

LOFAR was designed and built by ASTRON in the Netherlands and is currently being extended across Europe. As well as deep cosmology, LOFAR will be used to monitor the Sun’s activity, study planets, and understand more about lightning and geomagnetic storms. LOFAR will also contribute to UK and European preparations for the planned global next generation radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

Follow SEPnet on Facebook and Twitter

SEPnet - the grouping of South East Physics departments who have contributed signficant funds to LOFAR-UK have launched a new website, and are now also on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Connecting Chilbolton to the LOFAR core

While the installation of hardware at Chilbolton was completed this summer, the LOFAR-UK station is still in a commissioning phase where data quality is being checked, and the full data link to the LOFAR supercomputer at Groningen (in the Netherlands) is being established.

The Chilbolton LOFAR Radio Telescope has two modes of operation, standalone and remote. Remote operation will see the radio telescope controlled by ASTRON in Dwingeloo and data sent to Groningen. Standalone operation (which is already happening - more on that soon) sees the telescope controlled from Chilbolton and the data stored locally.

Data rates from a LOFAR station under remote operation can be over 20-30 TB (that's tera bytes) a day, which is equivalent to about 5000 DVDs. So as you can imagine this kind of data cannot be sent over the normal internet lines and a dedicated path is required. In fact a 10 Gbps (giga bit per second) connection is one of the contracted requirements between LOFAR-UK and ASTRON for hosting a LOFAR station at Chilbolton.

Linking Chilbolton to the Netherlands with this dedicated 10 Gb/s connection (equivalent to adding 100,000 broad band internet users in the small village of Chilbolton in rural Hampshire) turned out to be quite a challenge for LOFAR-UK with a significant amount of effort going into researching the best options (and not to mention that it dominates the cost of the telescope!). The main challenge actually was to get the data to London from where a fast link to Groningen was relatively cheap and easy. Multiple routes to London had to be considered, the main two being via Southampton (to the south of Chilbolton), or via Reading (to the north). Going via Southampton might looks a bit like going in the wrong direction, but it reduces the number of intermediate service providers, thus keeping the cost low.

So while no actual observations have taken place yet combining the Chilbolton station with the main LOFAR core (currently 20 science-ready stations in the Netherlands), this article should explain
why the first connection over the full 10 Gbps link to Groningen (which occurred early last week, with the first full-capacity transmission taking place yesterday) is a significant milestone for LOFAR-UK and something we have all been celebrating.

Throughput tests are currently being conducted and we hope to be able to establish the first data transmission very soon.

First Image from eMERLIN

Today is an exciting day for UK radio astronomy as eMERLIN has released its first image. This dramatic image shows the Double Quasar. In the image, light from a quasar billions of light years away is bent around a foreground galaxy by the curvature of space. A quasar is a galaxy powered by a super-massive black hole, leading to the ejection of jets of matter moving at almost the speed of light - one of which can be seen arcing to the left in the image.

This is a composite of the new e-MERLIN radio image of the Double Quasar and an earlier Hubble Space Telescope (HST) optical image. The radio emission generated by the black hole as seen with e-MERLIN is visible as the compact bright region superimposed on the (yellow-green) optical emission seen by HST.  
The e-MERLIN image is shown in false-colour with a colour table ranging from blue through red to white, where the colours represent the brightness of the radio emission. The HST image is made from WFPC2 images through two filters: the F555W filter (V-band) is coloured green and the F814W filter (I-band) is coloured red.
Credit: Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester 

e-MERLIN is an array of seven radio telescopes, spanning 217km, connected by a new optical fibre network to Jodrell Bank Observatory.

 As a radio telescope array eMERLIN of course has many similarities to LOFAR, but to readers familiar with LOFAR there are also several big differences. To start with eMERLIN observes at much higher frequences (shorter wavelengths) than LOFAR. The frequency (or equivalently wavelength) of electromagnetic radiation which can be detected using radio technology stretches all the way from sub-mm radiation (at many GHz) down to the limit set by the ionosphere at 30MHz (many metres in wavelength). eMERLIN detects radiation in three radio bands at roughly 1.5, 5 and 22 GHz, while LOFAR has two bands at much lower frequency (LBA at 30 - 80 MHz and the HBA at 120 - 240 MHz). This change in frequency means that the tecnhology for the antennas is much different. LOFAR as you know uses many dipole antennas all connected together by software for each "station". This would not work for the frequencies observed by eMERLIN which requires each point in the array to be a "traditional" radio antenna (as illustrated above). 

This e-MERLIN image demonstrates the successful transmission of wide-bandwidth digitised signals from all the telescopes remote from Jodrell Bank over the optical fibre network. This initial image, taken at a frequency of roughly 6.5 GHz, has an angular resolution of 50 milli-arcseconds, similar to the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. The new system is already approaching 3 times the sensitivity of the previous radio-linked MERLIN telescope. This will result in a very substantial (around a factor 5) further increase in sensitivity. Operations at full sensitivity, (achieved by including the Lovell telescope and upgrades of the bandwidths in the data links) are expected in 2011.

For more details see the press release at Jodrell Bank.

LOFAR like arrays for satellite TV and radio

There have been a couple of articles on technology news websites in the last week about the possible use of LOFAR like arrays to receive satellite TV or radio.

Gizmag: New chip could allow antenna arrays to replace satellite dishes

Next Big Future: Virtual Satellite Dish using energy efficient special DSP chip

Seems like an interesting impact of the development of software pointed radio telescopes like LOFAR - to make getting digital radio on your smart phone possible, or remove the need for aiming satellite dishes.

LOFAR-UK on the main LOFAR website

The main LOFAR website ran a story this week about the Chilbolton Opening.

We are also featured in the ASTRON Daily Image for today.

(After today you can find this and other daily images about Chilbolton by going to the Archive (link at top of the Daily Image page) and searching for "Chilbolton".)

First HBA tile deployed at Chilbolton!

Starting at 07:30 yesterday (Friday 2nd July 2010), in pretty miserable weather conditions, the first HBA tile was deployed at LOFAR-Chilbolton.

Inauguration`

I attended the LOFAR inauguration on Saturday. It was excellent - a spectacular show, slightly kitschy but with plenty of wine and, of course, Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands to formally open the telescope. My job at the ceremony was to sign the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on behalf of the UK as a founding member. It was quite formal !

Signing of the founding MoU
From left to right: Rene Vermeulen and Mike Garret [representing ASTRON], Ralph-Juergen Dettmar [Germany], Garrelt Mellema [Sweden], Michel Tagger [France], myself, and Ralph Wijers [Dutch Universities]

Queen Beatrix Opening LOFAR

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands opened LOFAR this weekend in a ceremony near the LOFAR core.



Read the full press release from ASTRON at this link.

Royal Opening for the LOFAR Core

As described in this press release from ASTRON, the LOFAR core was opened today in the Netherland by their Queen - Queen Beatrix.

The world’s largest radio telescope was officially launched at a special ceremony in the Netherlands attended by astronomers from the UK and many other countries.

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands formally opened LOFAR, which stands for Low Frequency Array, on Saturday 12 June. Representatives from consortia in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom then officially signed the memorandum that kicks off their scientific collaboration in LOFAR. The all-electronic ‘next generation’ telescope developed by ASTRON can now offer to astronomers the joint use of a network of antennae that spreads from its core region in the northeast of the Netherlands to distances of thousands of kilometers across Europe. It includes 96 antennae installed last week (7-11 June) at the Chilbolton Observatory in Hampshire].

Dr. René Vermeulen, Director of the Radio Observatory at ASTRON, is delighted about the international collaboration. He says: “With its European dimension LOFAR will serve a large international community of astronomers to study the Universe at the lowest frequencies accessible from the Earth in astounding detail.”

LOFAR uses sophisticated computing and high speed internet to combine all the signals to survey the sky in great detail. The giant telescope will enable scientists to study how distant galaxies take shape, to find out when the early Universe was first lit up, to probe the properties of energetic cosmic particles, to map magnetised structures all across the sky, and to monitor the sun’s activity as well as a wide range of variable and explosive celestial objects. It is a pathfinder for the development of a global telescope, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).

Professor Rob Fender, of the University of Southampton, is the project leader of LOFAR-UK and represented the UK consortium to sign an International Memorandum of Understanding at the inauguration ceremony.

Rob says: “When completed, LOFAR will consist of thousands of antennae spread across stations throughout Europe, of which Chilbolton is one. Stations are already built or under construction in the Netherlands, Germany, France and Sweden. Signals from the antennae are brought together by a supercomputer in the Netherlands and give a very wide view of the sky.

“At Southampton, we will be using LOFAR for research into very explosive and rapid phenomena such as black holes, neutron stars and pulsars."

Here is the collage of images of Chilbolton used to illustrate the UK contribution to LOFAR in the opening ceremony. That's LOFAR station UK608 in official terms!

Why have International Stations?

There's a nice item out online right now (see the Astronomy Now version) illustrating the benefit international stations like the one we're building at Chilbolton add to LOFAR. The article is describes the improvement in resolution seen between an image of a distant quasar taken by just the LOFAR core, and one taken using the core connected to two stations in Germany.

Here's the image.

Radio image of quasar 3C 196 at 4-10 metre wavelengths (30-80MHz frequency). Left: Data from the LOFAR stations in the Netherlands only. Right: Greater detail is revealed when the German stations are added to the array. Image: Olaf Wucknitz, Bonn University.

We're looking forward to seeing the first images taken including the Chilbolton station. But first we have to build it!

Visitor from SEPnet

SEPnet is a consortium of six partner universities working together to advance and sustain Physics as a strategically important subject for the UK economy and its science base in the South East Region of England. Within this network, SEPnet-Astro is a collaboration of astrophysicists at the Universities of Kent, Oxford, Portsmouth, Queen Mary University of London, Southampton and Sussex. SEPnet-Astro exists to encourage and support coherent research across the South-East of England through the strategic investment in radio astronomy, such as the LOFAR project.

Yesterday, Dr E James W West, Executive Director of SEPnet, came to visit the site for the first time.

Sardinia Radio Telescope

LOFAR isn't the only radio telescope under construction in Europe at the moment.

At curiously similar timing, the SRT (the 64m Sardinia Radio Telescope) is also in the midst of being built (in Sardinia, Italy). Images and videos are available here.

Of particular interest, the video from 22-May-2010 is a 36-hour time-lapse video of the lifting of the dish structure. As you can see, the SRT is a single dish radio telescope, while LOFAR of course is an array telescope. While both are radio telescopes, LOFAR is also designed to observe at MUCH lower frequencies than the SRT.

Here is a picture of the SRT taken from the INAF website.

Power to the... RF-container!

Work continues on the RF-container. One major step was accomplished today, with the application of power. This event marks the culmination of weeks of trenching, cabling and installation work. The test certificates are now all in place and this afternoon, the final checks were performed before power was applied.

In this first picture, Dave King performs the final inspection of the switch boxes prior to activation.



And here, with the final switch, Dave King activates the final circuit and the RF-Container is energised! They now have mains power on the LOFAR Chilbolton site.

Ground Works Start at Chilbolton

Digging has started on the Chilbolton site - a significant milestone for LOFAR-UK!

STFC support for LOFAR-UK

Following extensive discussions with STFC and the UK SKA R&D teams, a package has been formulated which guarantees the future of the LOFAR-UK station at Chilbolton, supplementing the resources already raised by LOFAR-UK. Additional support for installation, commissioning and operations of the station will now be provided from within the funding provision that was made for the UK SKA R&D programme, while maintaining the independence of LOFAR-UK. The program will now move ahead at full speed, facilitating full UK participation in LOFAR science during the first full array observations in 2010 and beyond.

Sad News for LOFAR-UK Community

There is sad news for the LOFAR-UK community from this weekend.

Dr Timothy Garn, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Royal Observatory of Edinburgh and a member of the LOFAR Surveys team died on Sunday after he lost his footing hiking in the Scottish mountains.

Edinburgh Evening News article

Dr. Philip Best, deputy PI for LOFAR-UK and Edinburgh astronomer is quoted as saying Dr Garn was "an outstanding scientist, always enthusiastic, energetic, and most of all extremely talented, continually surpassing expectations. Nature has cruelly taken Tim away far too early. It has cut short an extremely promising research career, and deprived the world of a truly fine young man."

Our deepest condolences go to Tim's family and friends at this time.

LOFAR-UK Statement on STFC Science Programme Prioritisation 2010-2015

LOFAR-UK Statement on the STFC Science Prioritisation 2010-2015 (pdf file)

LOFAR is a large new radio astronomy facility in the final phases of construction and commissioning. It will be the largest low-frequency radio telescope in the world, and is the major pathfinder for the low-frequency component of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The science case for LOFAR is extremely diverse, from planetary astrophysics to galaxy formation to the epoch of re-ionisation, facilitated by its multiple very large fields of view and resultant unparalleled survey speed.

LOFAR-UK is a consortium of astronomers with the goal of constructing and operating one or more antenna stations in the UK forming a key part of the International LOFAR Telescope across Europe. The consortium represents over 20 British universities, making it the largest radio astronomy collaboration in the country. More than 70 leading UK astronomers are directly involved in the project. Since 2005, LOFAR-UK has raised £1.2M from its member institutions independently of the research councils. We have been engaged with, and multiply-reviewed by STFC, as funding was sought for additional UK stations, technical development effort and, crucially, the bulk of the operating costs for the first station, dominated by the costs of data transport to the supercomputer in The Netherlands. All the various STFC panel recommendations have been for significant funding for the project. With the support of STFC, LOFAR-UK's independent funds were therefore used to purchase the first station, sited at the STFC facility at Chilbolton.

Our most recent request to STFC was therefore for running costs for this station, now under construction. These costs are at a level around 0.1% of the total current ground-based astronomy award, and this extremely modest operational budget would enable the UK astronomy community to participate in over 40% of the science from the International LOFAR Telescope, a 200MEuro facility, giving an extremely good return on STFC's investment. During the response to the STFC funding crisis, LOFAR-UK was reviewed by both the Far- Universe- and Near-Universe Advisory Panels (FUAP and NUAP respectively) as well as the Ground-Based Facilities Review (GBFR). All three panels rated the project extremely highly; in an open poll of UK astronomers, which was published in the GBFR, LOFAR-UK was rated as the sixth (out of 26) most important facility for UK astronomy over the next 10 years (only ESO facilities [ESO, VISTA, ALMA and E-ELT] and SKA R&D were ahead of it).

However, on Dec 16, LOFAR-UK was informed by STFC that there will be no funding of the project by the research council. This puts the entire project, and with it any UK involvement in LOFAR, in jeopardy.

LOFAR-UK will campaign to get this decision by STFC reviewed as soon as possible.

Efflesberg LOFAR Station Maps Sky with HBA

Check out this press release from the Max Planck Institut for Radio Astronomy at Efflesberg describing the first all-sky map of the radio sky made with a complete LOFAR station in the HBA (high band antenna) 110-190 MHz freq. band.

Nice aerial picture of the complete Efflesberg LOFAR station as well: