For the first time LOFAR and WSRT-Apertif have been used together to measure the life cycle of supermassive black holes emitting radio waves.
For the first time LOFAR and WSRT-Apertif have been used together to measure the life cycle of supermassive black holes emitting radio waves.
Astronomers at ASTRON have discovered a brown dwarf with LOFAR. The discovery of the object dubbed Elegast, opens up a new path that uses radio telescopes to discover faint objects that are close-cousins of Jupiter-like exoplanets.
From today (August 11th) up until Friday the yearly Perseids meteor shower will have its peak. This phenomenon is not only interesting for amateur astronomers, professional astronomers will be observing them as well.
The Sun’s activity appears not only in the well-known 11-year Sunspot cycle, but also in short duration eruptions as flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
The Earth receives its life-sustaining energy from Sunlight, but “explosions” on the Sun can also be life-threatening. Explosions on the Sun’s surface, called flares, can spew out large masses of plasma and harmful radiation towards the planets.
In order to receive radio signals from across the Universe, LOFAR needs to be very sensitive. The downside of that sensitivity is susceptibility to radio interference: other sources that produce radio signals that LOFAR detects, but does not want to measure.
In 2018, Italy officially joined the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) and in the near future the LOFAR station in Italy will become operational.
In 2021, ASTRON will deliver TMSS (Telescope Manager Specification System), which is a brand-new platform for the specification, administration, and scheduling of LOFAR observations.
In the LOFAR radio telescope, the observation data is synchronized over time for accurate processing of the received signals. Until now, the telescope uses GPS techniques to synchronize the observation data, achieving an accuracy between 1 ns and 10 ns.
Supermassive black holes can leave a trail of energetic particles that astronomers are able to detect using radio telescopes.
If the antennae of LOFAR are the senses of the radio telescope, then the central correlator is its brain. It is the place where all the data streams come together and are converted into astronomy data.