Seeing in a New Light (and Searching for Extraterrestrials) with LOFAR

Analysis by Nicole Gugliucci | Tue Apr 13, 2010 08:16 PM ET

One of the coolest things about being an astronomer is being the first one to look at brand new data of some distant object in our universe. It is even more exciting when we, as a community, are breaking into new or barely-explored regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. LOFAR (the pan-European Low Frequency Array) is one of several projects doing just that.

At the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow, LOFAR released new images and observing plans for the telescope that is currently under construction. With 44 stations, each with dozens of antennas, spread across Europe, the observatory will have unprecedented spatial resolution for meter-wave astronomy.

With nearly half of the stations built, they present a really great image of a radio source called 3C61.1. This shows the jets of relativistic electrons screaming away from the supermassive black hole of a distant galaxy. Low frequency observations show less energetic, or older, populations of electrons, thus showing us emission that traditional centimeter-wave radio telescopes may not detect.

In addition to radio jets, cosmic rays, intergalactic hydrogen, and whatever new natural phenomena are out there, LOFAR has signed on to help with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. After all, we don't know what frequencies our Galactic neighbors might be using for communication, so we may as well check as many as we can!

more

http://news.discovery.com/space/seeing-in-a-new-light-and-searching-for-extraterrestrials-with-lofar.html


On December 10, 2009, the remote LOFAR station in Potsdam-Bornim (Germany) has seen first light. The Astrophysical Institute Potsdam (AIP) is establishing a remote LOFAR station in Potsdam in collaboration with ASTRON. The low-band antenna field (30-80 MHz) has been completed in October/November this year by the Astrophysikalische Institut Potsdam (AIP) (see left picture). This has been possible thanks to both the dedicated work of the people at the AIP involved and the good weather conditions during the construction phase.

In the second week of December, a team from ASTRON finished the installation of the electronics in the cabinet and connected the antennas with the central unit in the cabinet.

On Thursday, December 10, at noon the first radio map was taken (right). It shows the sky at 47 MHz with the bright radio sources Cas A and Cyg A.