Daily Image
02-07-2010
Her Majesty the Queen arriving by helicopter at the LOFAR opening, as seen from pulse triggers on LOFAR station CS021
| Submitter: | Arthur Corstanje |
| Description: | At the LOFAR inauguration, we had a live feed of trigger messages from three nearby LOFAR stations, to display arrival directions of pulses in near-real-time. The polar plot shows arrival directions as on the compass (east is to the right), for easy comparison with sources on the ground. The midpoint is zenith, the outer edge is the horizon. LOFAR station CS021 is located about 800 m east of the LOFAR opening site. The orange-blue points are (obviously) the ones from the Queen's helicopter passing overhead. They are shown for her arrival around 14:45 as well as the departure at 17:13. At the latter time we actually saw two helicopters passing over the LOFAR opening area, and directly after, these points on the trigger live-display. The points to the east-northeast show minor interference, probably from a farmer's electric fence. As we have set the trigger system to high sensitivity, even the weaker electric fences show up. We don't know exactly what emits the pulses we see. It might even be possible that e.g. the electric fence acts as a radar signal in this case, and that we see its reflections off the helicopter. |
| Copyright: | Arthur Corstanje, Radboud University Nijmegen, for the LOFAR-Cosmic Ray team |
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