New low-frequency antennas to study the cosmos

ASTRON, the University of Hamburg and Bielefeld University have signed a contract for construction of a new German radioastronomy station close to Hamburg for the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT).

LOFAR, designed and built by ASTRON Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, is a transformational radio telescope that is uniquely powerful and versatile for studies at the lowest frequencies that can be observed from Earth. The German LOng Wavelength consortium (GLOW) already has five operational LOFAR radioastronomy antenna stations, making it ASTRON’s largest international partner in the ILT.

The overall sensitivity and the ability of the ILT to image fine details in celestial objects are increased by adding more LOFAR stations at greater distances from the core (located in the northeast of the Netherlands). Production of hardware for a LOFAR antenna station, which consists of hundreds of antennas and advanced electronics, is contracted out to industry to a value of more than 1 million euros.

With LOFAR, astronomers can: look back billions of years to a time before the first stars and galaxies were formed (the so-called ‘Dark Ages’); survey vast areas of the low-frequency radio sky; and can be constantly on the lookout for some of the most energetic and burst-like events in the universe.

LOFAR is also a recognised science and technology pathfinder facility for the next-generation radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which is being prepared by a global collaboration of countries and institutes, including the Netherlands and Germany. ASTRON has been an initiator and principal player in the SKA throughout. ASTRON is now taking many concepts of LOFAR, in particular the (real-time and offline) handling of huge data streams, to the next level in preparation for the SKA