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.

Open Day at LOFAR Core

Post taken from: LOFAR news, ASTRON.

On Saturday 12 May, ASTRON is organising a LOFAR open day during the 'SNN EU Kijkdagen'. During this event, organised by the Northern Netherlands Provinces (SNN), organisations in the Netherlands that received funding from SNN open their doors to the public. It is not necessary to sign in for the open day.

Theme

ASTRON organises fun activities for young and old near the LOFAR field. The theme SNN has for this day is "Innovation". A theme that suits ASTRON perfectly! On this open day you can find out how LOFAR exactly works and how this innovative idea for a giant telescope was developed.

Activities

The LOFAR open day committee is in full swing organising activities. The activities range from a mini-fun lab where kids make their own flash light (for a small charge), workshops 'make your own pulsar' (exploded star) and a journey through the Universe in the mobile planetarium of the RuG to tours on the LOFAR field and 'looking' at the sky yourself with a small radio telescope and a solar telescope. Free posters are also available for kids. You can see preview here.

The activities during the LOFAR open day are all free of charge and parking is possible on the location (free). Keep an eye on this web page to stay up to date!

Location

The open day takes place at the Exloërweg 13. There will be signs near the location that you can follow to the open day premises.

For more information, keep an eye on the ASTRON website on www.astron.nl.

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

Special LOFAR Edition of the Jodcast

Following their visit to Chilbolton last month to help with the repairs to LOFAR-UK, the Jodcast has just released their special LOFAR edition.

They talk to Dr Neal Jackson (Manchester) about LOFAR itself; Dr Tom Hassall (Southampton) about using it to detect pulsars and (very soon to be Dr) Anna Kapinska (Portsmouth) about how it can be used to study active galactic nuclei.

LOFAR-UK Repair Day Covered by Discovery News

The LOFAR-UK repair day was covered in a story written by @DrLucyRogers for Discovery News.

"High Winds Ravage British Radio Telescope"