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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."
Am I the only one who can't stop hearing the chorus
"LOFAR...
Of the Hill People...
LOFAR"
now? I like the name...
I built an antenna sensitive to wavelengths as long as 80 meters Friday night... Yes... I know.... Friday night and I have nothing better than HAM radio...
That's ok though, the pop and crackle of pulsars keeps my bed plenty warm.
What, in Europe they don't have abductions?? They don't need to transmit and negotiate return of the hostages when we get in touch?
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
No, they have the French.
this is in image of the centre of the system, it is 6 times as big as the other fields spread over europe. The water around it has been made to keep wild animals from wandering around and knocking over antennas.
http://www.astron.nl/dailyimage/pictures/20100421/Lofar9mrt2010.jpg
Nope, not many abductions around here. Also, basically no anal probing going on. The aliens seem to have a strange fetish for hillbillies and trailer trash. Why that is so is on of the great conundrums of the universe.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
T.B.H. It sounds like it is some long running practical joke just to mess with our heads.
> What, in Europe they don't have abductions?
No. In Europe the aliens make crop circles.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"Low frequency" here seems to be upper radio range. What do you get at that range?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Hahaha, I remember the aliens trying their hand at a cropcircle here (I live right in the middle of LOFAR country), but failing miserably with an all out of whack circle. The local media tried to spruce it up all they could, but it was just too wonky to be taken seriously. I guess they went back to flattening reeds in the UK since then.
The Google Translation says that LOFAR has made unique observations, which in context I understand to mean as measurements, not the same as saying that it has grabbed the first images. Also, there are no jpgs of pulsars in TFA, so show us the money!
Any Netherlanders who could kindly clarify this?
BTW, I'm from Mexico and have been to your peculiar, intense and wonderful country three times, I hope to return in about a decade with my wife and son (who was born three weeks ago), to skate from town to town at night in the frozen canals, torches in our hands to guide our way.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
The Google Translation says that LOFAR has made unique observations, which in context I understand to mean as measurements, not the same as saying that it has grabbed the first images. Also, there are no jpgs of pulsars in TFA, so show us the money!
Any Netherlanders who could kindly clarify this?
Sure, but it's a bit of a trick question. I think you're right in that there have no images been gathered yet. I think Google Translation is right in translating 'waarnemingen' by 'observations'. Since English isn't my first language, I did a lookup to verify that 'observation' doen't necessarily mean something that results in an image, and indeed the second meaning the Merriam Webster gives is 'an act of recognizing and noting a fact or occurrence often involving measurement with instrument'.
Offtopic: Congratulations with your son, and I hope the climate, in a decad, will indeed allow skating on the canals...
"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
In Soviet Socialist Europe , Aliens don't abduct you. In Soviet Socialist Europe, you abduct Aliens.
Umm, actually, the Aliens drive into Groningen town square, crack a few Amstels, puff a little blow in the cafe, and hey, if there's any anal probing to be done (what is an anus in your species anyway? Do Aliens have one?), well, there's a by-the-hour hotel just round the corner from the church ...
The Aliens get back home, late, dishevveled, and their samples of cow are cooked, covered in slightly spicy sauce and wrapped in bread. The three genders of stay-at-home-Alien are Not Amused and the would-be-abducting Alien spends the night on the sofa.
My memories of Groningen are rather vague. But fun. "Amsterdam of the North"
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The way things are going, I think you should be more worried about you having any canals left and won't instead be saddled with some huge lakes.
Unless you guys decide to forego the dykes and instead work towards making the country rise on hydraulic legs, so you can roam the world and settle somewhere nice ;)
Don't worry, we have ample plans to combat any rising of the oceans. Short term there will be strengthening the existing dykes.
Long term there is the solution of damming the whole English channel. This effectively makes the Northsea new land for us.
As I understand it, work on this will commence in 2016 and it should be ready (but government projects are known to extend) in 2025.
Pics or it didn't happen.
> pulsars, for example, are often observed around the 1-1.5 GHz range. (There's a hydrogen emission line at 1.5 GHz,...
Yes, but as you look at objects farther away, they are also moving away from us at higher speeds causing red shift in all their emissions. So the 7 meter (40MHz) signals originated at a much higher frequency.
Completely off-topic, but wow, I just browsed to that site, Chrome automatically translated it to me and it was a perfect read! I went on to read a bunch more pages with no difficulties. Translation has come a loooong way :-)
Only one interesting comment? Why so many people like to make jokes about Dutch technologies, I really don't know. Or do I just hear complaints about (research) jobs moving to Europe and Asia? Remember some flood in the US not long ago? Remember who helped you how to get prepared for such disasters? So "dykes" should be something you don't laugh about, but respect. They save your life. You probably heard the saying "God created the land, but the Dutch created their own". Just like LOFAR is an unique project, which sees the sky with different eyes. Lower frequencies means different data to be combined with existing HF-data, to complete the picture. Pulsars are an unique phenomenon which stll is not understood at full; reseacrh on lower frequencies Another thing is that LOFAR can look in any direction, whereas normal radio-telescopes can only look into 1 direction. The Netherlands have a very high reputation in (radio) astronomy kept high for several centuries.