Daily Image
28-06-2010
M51 observations with two young Dutch radio telescopes
| Submitter: | George Heald |
| Description: | This year, as we celebrate the official opening of LOFAR, the venerable WSRT turns 40 years young. Nearly four decades ago, the first observation of a nearby galaxy with the WSRT was Messier 51 (M51) - the observations that revealed for the first time that spiral arms, seen so clearly in the optical, also emit at radio wavelengths. This was one of the first of a long series of scientific achievements of the WSRT. It's therefore fitting that one of LOFAR's first imaging observations is of the same galaxy! When the WSRT was as young as LOFAR is today, it took a lot longer to generate Daily Images, but fresh, exciting results were nevertheless abundant, just as they are now. A typical style for representing data in those days was the "ruled surface plot" - one from the M51 paper by Mathewson et al. (1972) is shown in today's image. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so the new LOFAR data are reproduced here in a similar fashion. The two plots are shown at roughly the same angular scale. LOFAR is still in the process of being constructed, and we have a long way to go to improve both sensitivity and resolution, but the grand design spiral structure is already clearly visible in this early LOFAR ruled surface plot. Of course we are now in the 21st century, so can also compare the LOFAR M51 data with the spectacular Hubble Heritage image. Stay tuned for further progress in imaging with LOFAR! |
| Copyright: | ASTRON/LOFAR |
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