Daily Image
23-07-2010
Observing Jupiter
| Submitter: | Jean-Mathias Griessmeier (for the LOFAR Planet Working Group) |
| Description: | In order to demonstrate the capabilities of the LOFAR telescope at it's lowest frequencies, the LOFAR Planet Working Group turned the telescope to Jupiter when it was active and beaming its s-bursts in the direction of the Earth. The animation above shows two minutes of this observation, and the quality of the data is noticeable: Even though the observation was taken at the lower edge of the LOFAR low band, the emission is strikingly bright. Indeed, it can be seen that the observation was taken below 30 MHz, which is the low frequency limit used for regular LOFAR observations. In the second part of the animation the temporal resolution is progressively increased, zooming in on the rich details Jupiter's emission has to offer at shorter and shorter timescales. As good as the signal quality may already seem, this is just the beginning. The above animation was created using the data of just three stations, added incoherenty. Ultimately, we will have a coherent sum of over 40 stations, which will lead to an improvement of more than one order of magnitude! |
| Copyright: | ASTRON |
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