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Domain: lofar.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to lofar.org.
Stories · 7
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Milky Way Magnetic Fields Charted
eldavojohn writes "Using radio telescope data, scientists from around the world have plotted the Milky Way Galaxy's magnetic field in the form of Faraday Depth. From the article, 'For 150 years, scientists have measured cosmic magnetic field by observing the Faraday effect. They know that when polarized light passes though a magnetized medium, the plane of polarization turns. This concept is called Faraday rotation. The strength and direction of the magnetic field governs the amount of rotation that occurs. So scientists observe the rotation to investigate the magnetic fields' properties. Radio astronomers study the polarized light from distant radio source, passing through the Milky Way on the way to Earth, in order to measure our Galaxy's magnetic field. By measuring the polarization of the light sources at different frequencies, researchers can determine the amount of Faraday rotation.' In the future, radio telescope technologies like LOFAR, eVLA, ASKAP, MeerKAT and the SKA hope to provide enhanced Faraday rotation data so scientists can better understand turbulence in galactic gas and these galactic magnetic field structures." -
LOFAR Telescope Array Grabs First Pulsar Images
vikingpower writes "LOFAR, the LOw Frequency ARray radio telescope, under construction in the north of the Netherlands, saw its first pulsars (English translation of Dutch original) — through coupling it with radio telescopes in Germany and France. LOFAR is sensitive to wavelengths as long as seven meters, and will be inaugurated on June 12 of this year." -
Software Telescope
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC News is running the story 'Pyramid power' probes universe which is about LOFAR's software telescope for radio astronomy. The heart of the system is a IBM Blue Gene which processes data from an array of simple pyramidal radio antennae. The array of antennae are also multitasking in the fields of geophysics and agriculture." -
Software Telescope
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC News is running the story 'Pyramid power' probes universe which is about LOFAR's software telescope for radio astronomy. The heart of the system is a IBM Blue Gene which processes data from an array of simple pyramidal radio antennae. The array of antennae are also multitasking in the fields of geophysics and agriculture." -
Software Telescope
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC News is running the story 'Pyramid power' probes universe which is about LOFAR's software telescope for radio astronomy. The heart of the system is a IBM Blue Gene which processes data from an array of simple pyramidal radio antennae. The array of antennae are also multitasking in the fields of geophysics and agriculture." -
When Lofar Meets Stella
Roland Piquepaille writes "The LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) telescope is a new IT radio-telescope which will use about 20,000 simple radio antennae when it's completed in 2008. At this time, it will cover an area with a diameter of 360 kilometers centered over the Netherlands. Its small radio antennae will detect radio wavelengths up to 30 meters, and because the ionosphere can bend some of these radio waves, the Lofar images might be somewhat blurry. So all the information captured by these antennae will be digitized and sent to a computing facility at a rate of 22 terabits/second today, and almost 50 terabits/second in 2010. This is the reason why Lofar needs Stella, an IBM supercomputer installed recently in Groningen, also in the Netherlands, to process signals from up to 13 billion light years from Earth. Stella consists of 12,000 PowerPC microprocessors and has a computing power of 27.4 teraflops. This overview contains more details and a picture about the Lofar-Stella interaction." -
350 KM Diameter Radio Telescope Array
photonic writes "Yesterday the Dutch government awarded a 52 Million Euro grant (press release in Dutch) to the Lofar, or Low Frequency Array telescope. Instead of traditional single large disk, the telescope will consist of 25000 small base stations, which are each not much more than small omni-directional antennas. Together they will be used as a phased array with enormous resolution. The base stations will be spread out across the northern part of the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. Eventually, the telescope will be part of an international collaboration, with additional arrays planned by MIT and in Australia. There are also plans to add more sensors to the base stations to form a distributed network for monitoring weather, earthquakes and the like. The array should be finished in 2006 and will cost around 150 MEuro total. The telescope will also be very interesting from an IT point of view: Dedicated fiber optical cables will be needed for the enormous amount of data transport (Tera-bits/second). This was actually used as a big selling point, because some rural areas will get fast internet access as an aside. There are contacts with IBM to use one of their future Blue Gene supercomputers for the central data processing. An English brochure is available with more details."