LOFAR news
10 years of LOFAR highlights: Revisiting the Fanaroff-Riley dichotomy and radio-galaxy morphology with the LOFAR Two-Metre Sky Survey
It has been known since the 1970s that the radio structures made by jets from black holes come in two types: very powerful jets are brightest at the edges and weaker jets are brightest in the middle and fade out at large distances.
10 years of LOFAR highlights: Pulsar shows sudden mood swings
In 2013 an international research team – led by Dutch astronomers (SRON, NOVA and ASTRON) – discovers that pulsar PSR B0943+10 can both radically change the amounts of radio waves and X-ray waves it emits within seconds.
10 years of LOFAR highlights: Super-slow pulsar challenges theory
In 2017 LOFAR detects the slowest spinning radio pulsar to date. The neutron star spins around once only every 23.5 seconds almost three times more slowly than the slowest spinning radio pulsar detected up to that point (8.5 seconds).
10 years of LOFAR highlights: The construction and use of our own broadband optical data transport system
In the Netherlands, the LOFAR telescope consists of approximately 40 antenna stations that are spread over the entire North of the Netherlands. The amount of LOFAR data that needs to be transferred from these stations is so large that it cannot be sent via the regular Internet.
10 years of LOFAR highlights: Infographic – Interference detection and Dysco
This infographic explains how LOFAR treats data collected by its stations.
10 years of LOFAR highlights: RSP boards make sure beamforming is possible
LOFAR is the first radio telescope of its size, wherein tens of thousands of small antenna elements are used instead of a few big dishes, as was more common in radio astronomy. All these antennas generate enormous amounts of data 24/7.
10 years of LOFAR highlights: Why lightning often strikes twice
Although the saying goes ‘lightning never strikes the same place twice’, in fact it often does. Why it does so however, has long remained a mystery, but in 2019 a team of scientists led by the University of Groningen (RUG) used LOFAR to shed light on this matter.
LOFAR images cosmic radio monsters
Pareidolia is a tendency that pushes humans to see shapes in clouds or faces in inanimate objects.
Help to find the location of newly discovered black holes in the LOFAR Radio Galaxy Zoo project
Scientists are asking for the public’s help to find the origin of hundreds of thousands of galaxies that have been discovered by the largest radio telescope ever built: LOFAR.