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Fig. 1:
The LOFAR central stations on a specially engineered field (“superterp”) between Exloo and Buinen in Drenthe, in the north east of the Netherlands.
Image: Aerophoto Eelde.
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Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands formally opened LOFAR,
which stands for Low Frequency Array. 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. Three German stations are already
integrated ( Details in the Structure of a distant Quasar): Effelsberg near Bonn,
Tautenburg near Jena, the MPA-Station in Unterweilenbach near Garching,
and soon Bornim near Potsdam.
“After all these years of preparation we are finally entering in the
commissioning phase,” says Benedetta Ciardi from the Max Planck Institute
for Astrophysics. “We are all looking forward to the inflow of data ahead of us.”
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).
Further Information:
The International SKA Forum 2010
 Pressemitteilung des MPIfR
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON).
German LOng Wavelength (GLOW).
LOFAR MPA Website
Contact:
Hannelore Hämmerle
Press Officer
Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics
and Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics
Phone: +49 89 30000-3980
E-Mail: hhaemmerle mpa-garching.mpg.de
Benedetta Ciardi
Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics
Phone: +49 89 30000-2018
E-mail: bciardimpa-garching.mpg.de
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