Week 8: Monday: Started with editing the new I-LOFAR website, by adding in consortium, and also adding in my blog posts. I then moved onto POLOFAR data analysis as I am looking at a type 1 storm, and observing its intensity. Aoife then gave me her education section she had written, so I can add […]
The International LOFAR Telescope consists of many LOFAR stations that radiate from the Netherlands and which will soon stretch from Ireland to Poland. The longest baseline stretches about 1,900 km, making it possible to produce high resolution images at low radio frequencies (~0.1 arcsecond at 200 MHz).
Gas clouds of hydrogen and formation of massive stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. This image was obtained using LOFAR’s High Band Antennas. From Glenn White (Open University/Rutherford Appleton Laboratories).
LOFAR was used to make images of the Whirlpool Galaxy, a large spiral galaxy first sketched by the 3rd Earl of Rosse at Birr Castle. This images was created by another Irish astronomer, David Mulcahy at the University of Manchester. You can find out on this from their press release.
While trying to observe the structure of the early Universe, astronomers at the University of Groningen found that our Galaxy has a spaghetti like structure when it comes to its magnetic field. Read more in their press release.
The enigmatic radio galaxy Cygnus A is one of the brightest objects that LOFAR can see. This image by John McKean, who is now with the Square Kilometre Array team in Manchester, shows plasma jets from the black hole that stretch 2,000 light-years from the core of Cygnus A.