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German astronomers have made an important step towards a new, major telescope called LOFAR (LOw Frequency Array). LOFAR is a novel radio telescope for cosmic radio waves that, in a few years time, is going to be the largest telescope on Earth.
[
May
09, 2006]
On May 3, the first meeting of the German LOng Wavelength Consortium (GLOW) took place at the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam. On this occasion, the members elected their chairman Prof. Anton Zensus, Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie in Bonn as well as his deputy, Prof. Marcus Brueggen, Professor of Astrophysics at the International University Bremen.
Members of this consortium are the astronomical institutes of the universities Bochum, Bonn, Cologne, the Max-Planck-Institut for Radioastronomy in Bonn, the International University Bremen, the Max-Planck-Institut for Astrophysics in Garching, the Sternwarte Hamburg, the Forschungszentrum Jülich, the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam and the Thüringer Landessternwarte in Tautenburg.
LOFAR is the first telescope of its kind. In contrast to classical dish-like radio antennae, LOFAR consists of a set of simple, small radio antenna that are spread all over Europe. It is the first digital radio telescope and has no moving parts. One of the worlds fastest supercomputers, IBM's 'blue gene' located in Groningen, correlates all incoming data. This way, the array of antennae acts like a giant radio-telescope with an equivalent dish-size of several hundred kilometres. Its computing power of 27 Teraflops and its memory of 1 Petabyte are needed to digest the huge data rate of 500 Gbits/second that comes in from hundreds of stations. Thus, astronomers will be able to observe the sky in several directions at the same time.
LOFAR is currently under construction by the radio-astronomical institute ASTRON in Dwingeloo in the Netherlands. In Western Frisia they have started to assemble the first of 77 core stations. The capabilities of LOFAR can be increased tremendously by extending it to a European level, thus creating a European Sensor Network. The GLOW consortium plans to contribute a total of twelve LOFAR stations at sites in Germany - of which six are planned in more detail already (Bremen, Effelsberg, Garching, Hamburg, Jülich, Tautenburg and Tremsdorf). The first LOFAR station with a size of 110 times 60 metres will be constructed this year near Effelsberg in collaboration by ASTRON and the Max-Planck-Institut for Radioastronomy in Bonn.
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