Listening to the Universe: LOFAR Is the Largest Telescope on Earth

[MatiasRaudzus]

I never heard about LOFAR until today. There's a video at the article's site.

Back in September, Motherboard ventured into the English countryside to “listen” to the universe. There lives a brand new piece of Europe’s already-massive Low Frequency Radio Array radio telescope: a clever EU-wide installation that uses low-tech antennas and supercomputer-power data processing to transform into a giant mega-telescope, absorbing cosmic radio waves from the full sky. Watch our piece above, which includes a great explanation of LOFAR from our Dutch friends at telescope-maker Astron, to learn how it all works. Watch the trailer on Youtube here.

For the longest time, astronomy centered around what could be observed with our most wonderful and yet meager visual tool, the eye. But in the last fifty years, the ability to gaze up into space using radio waves, infrared and ultraviolet radiation and X- and gamma rays have provided new and completely unexpected information about the nature and history of the Universe, yielding a cosmic zoo of strange and exotic objects. But we have yet to properly explore the low radio frequencies, the lowest energy extreme of the spectrum accessible from the Earth. (Astronomers don’t actually listen to the signals, but convert them into data and images.)

With more “resolution” than any other telescope, the 1500 km-wide LOFAR array will open this frontier to a broad range of astrophysical studies, including transient sources, ultra high energy cosmic rays, cosmic magnetism, and the Epoch of Reionization.

In the past month, using signals from the new station, LOFAR has delivered has delivered its first EU-UK radio ’pictures.’ The images of the 3C196 quasar (a black hole in a distant galaxy) were taken last month by the giant network, which is now almost 1000 km wide – ten times as large as the original array in the Netherlands – making it the largest telescope in the world. LOFAR will also contribute to UK and European preparations for the planned global next generation radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

“This is fantastic”, says Professor Rob Fender, who features in our piece. “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."

Don’t be surprised. That’s just the kind of bandwidth you need when you’re downloading the cosmos.

http://www.motherboard.tv/2011/2/22/listening-to-the-universe-the-largest-telescope-on-earth--2

[neoadorable]

there go the Steam downloads in the neighborhood...damn space industry...i kid i kid. i'd give the gross global product to space exploration if i could. thanks for posting this, intersting tech, quite innovative.

[Lezard]

Don’t be surprised. That’s just the kind of bandwidth you need when you’re downloading the cosmos.

WOW no wonder my download speed for the Cosmos series on TPB went Sky high, I was wondering if 10MBS download was really true or not. Thank you LOFAR (J/k)

I really hope one day we can capture TV signals l from another civilization, but OMFG would the CRIAA come knocking at our HALO( High Orbit Low Altitude) for pirating their TV shows haha????

[neoadorable]

aliens will never bother invading Earth. we're an insult to their intelligence now that Carl has been gone for 15 years.