Second Round of Proposals to use LOFAR-UK as a single station

The second announcement of opportunity for UK scientists to apply to use the LOFAR-UK station in "stand-alone", or single station mode is now live. The deadline for proposals is 5pm on Monday 10th December 2012. For more details see this page the LOFAR-UK For Astronomers pages.

Deadline for Proposals for LOFAR-UK Stand-a-lone Observations Extended to midnight

There was a glitch with the submission address for the LOFAR-UK call for proposals for stand-alone observations. 


This now appears to be working again (but if you have any problems with it, please let us know).


To account for any problems this might have caused for people, we have extended the deadline until midnight tonight.


For more details see the Announcement of Opportunity.

Deadline for Proposal for UK Standalone Observations Monday 30th April

A reminder that the deadline for the first call for propsals to use the LOFAR-UK station in standalone mode is 5pm this coming Monday 30th April.

For more details see the Announcement of Opportunity.

LOFAR Single Station Meeting May 2012 in Nancay, France

The 2012 annual meeting of LOFAR Single Station users will happen in Nancay, France on 9th May 2012.

LBAs in the Snow in Nancay. Image credit: Station de Radioastronomie de Nancay

This annual meeting brings together the local teams and the users of the different international LOFAR stations. This is the opportunity to discuss problems related to the installation, the administration and the scientific and educational use of LOFAR stations in "single station" mode, i.e. when they are not connected to the LOFAR network. The international teams are working on various aspects of "single station" software (see LOFAR wiki), and it is important to maintain a maximum of cohesion and to maximise the visibility of all tools.

Please visit the meeting website for more information. 

LOFAR-UK Call for Proposals for Standalone Observations

View of the LOFAR site at Chilbolton, with the Low Band Array (LBA) in the foreground. Credit: STFC/SEPnet

LOFAR-UK is pleased to announce the opportunity for scientists to carry out shared-risk observations using the UK LOFAR station at Chilbolton as a stand-alone facility. (Observations taken as part of the
International LOFAR Telescope array are co-ordinated through the ILT)

The LOFAR-Chilbolton array operates in the low radio frequency regime, from ~20-80 MHz and 110-240 MHz. The important station parameters (bandwidth, theoretical sensitivity, allowed frequency settings, primary beam, etc) are fully detailed in this document.  Equiped with the ARTEMIS back-end, the LOFAR Chilbolton station offers unique capabilities for tied-array monitoring, ionospheric riometry, solar spectrography, large-area imaging, and other scientific projects.

LOFAR-UK is making available a minimum of 200 hours of observing time using the facility. This call for proposals is open to any interested observer. However, LOFAR-UK is only able to provide observing support and training to scientists working at LOFAR-UK institutes; for external scientists, some degree of experience with the system is required.

Observations will be carried out in shared-risk mode, and will be subject to the commissioning rules of the LOFAR consortium. Of particular relevance is the publication and authorship policy, to which there is also a supplementary short list of LOFAR-UK Builders for observations using Chilbolton as a stand-alone array.

Proposals for use of the facility may be of up to two A4 pages in length, at a minimum of 11pt font. These two pages should include:

* a self-contained scientific justification for the observations
* one paragraph of text describing the proposed goals, written at a level understandable to an interested member of the general public.
* technical information relating to the observations and required observing time
* any figures and references
* for observers external to LOFAR-UK institutions, an indication of their experience with LOFAR observations.

Proposals should be in pdf format, with a maximum file size of 5MB. They should be submitted by email to:

--> lofar-proposals~a.t~stfc.ac.uk

--> by 5pm on 30th April 2012

For further information, see the LOFAR-UK webpages for astronomers, or email lofar-proposals~a.t~stfc.ac.uk

LOFAR at the AAS

LOFAR seems to be well represented at the American Astronomical Society meeting which is happening in Seattle this week. The booth has been popular thanks to a wonderful model of LOFAR station in a typical Dutch landscape.

(Picture from ASTRON image of the day for Jan 11th)


And yesterday they made some live observations using several of the Dutch stations (and one in Germany) which you can watch in the below video.



What a wonderful demonstration of how LOFAR works.  It's been getting some really positive attention on Twitter (search for 'LOFAR #AAS217' to see for yourself.). Well done to all involved. :)