Entries by Peter Gallagher

Institute of Physics Award for Joe McCauley

Congratulating to the Technical Lead for I-LOFAR, Mr. Joe McCauley, on being awarded an Institute of Physics Technical Skills Award 2021. Congratulations Joe! The Technical Skills Awards celebrate the contributions that Technicians make to physics, and recognise employers that demonstrate their commitment and contribution to scientific and engineering apprenticeship schemes. Short citation For his outstanding […]

Launch of I-LOFAR Education Centre & AstroLands Education Programme

Trinity College Dublin, Birr Scientific & Heritage Foundation, and Offaly County Council announce the opening of the I-LOFAR Education Centre and launch of the Astronomical Midlands Schools and Public Engagement Programme, with very special guest Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, on Thursday the 30thof May. Astronomical Midlands, which has been funded by Science Foundation Ireland, […]

LOFAR Radio Telescope Reveals Secrets of Solar Storms

Dublin, Ireland, February 18, 2019: An international team of scientists from Trinity College Dublin, the University of Helsinki, and the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies today announced a major discovery on the nature of solar storms in the journal Nature Astronomy (PDF available at Springer Nature SharedIt). The Sun is the closest star to our planet in […]

STREAM Creative Suite funded by Enterprise Ireland

A consortium including the Local Enterprise Office (LEO) Offaly, Offaly County Council and I-LOFAR has been awarded €458,240 from the Enterprise Ireland Regional Development Fund to establish “STREAM Creative Suite” in Birr Technology Centre. Orla Martin, Head of Enterprise in LEO Offaly explained that STREAM Creative Suite will be a natural extension to the I-LOFAR Project. […]

The Astronomical Midlands: Engaging Rural Communities with Astronomy

We are delighted to launch a new engagement project in 2019 – the Astronomical Midlands or AstroLands for short – that uses the recently constructed Irish Low Frequency Array (I-LOFAR) and Education Centre at Birr Castle Demesne to connect with students, teachers and members of the public in rural communities in the Midlands. Astronomical Midlands, funded […]

Offaly County Council confers Civic Recognition Award on Professor Peter Gallagher

Press Release from Offaly County Council: Professor Gallagher received the award at a Civic Reception in Offaly County Council on Monday, 16th October 2018. The special event was attended by Professor Gallagher’s family, colleagues and guests from the worlds of science, academia, tourism, enterprise and local development. Among the guests were Lord and Lady Rosse, […]

First Pulsar Light with I-LOFAR!

Pulsars are rotating neutron stars that beam radiation into space like rapidly rotating lighthouses. Last week a team of scientists from Ireland and the UK used I-LOFAR and a new Dell-EMC cluster called the “REALtime Transient Acquisition Cluster (REALTA)” to observe our first pulsar, B0950+08. The plot below shows the first thirty seconds of an observation of […]

Big Data Processing for I-LOFAR: REALTA

I-LOFAR is a true ‘big data’ project, and as part of the International LOFAR Telescope, is a pathfinder telescope to the future Square Kilometre Array telescope, which will create perhaps the largest dataset in the world (an exabyte per day!). To date, the data processing capabilities of  I-LOFAR have not  been sufficient to allow the telescope study astronomy objects […]

Ready for Space Explorers!

On June 5, 2018 we completed the refurbishment of our new I-LOFAR Education Centre & Control Room at the Rosse Observatory, Birr Castle, Co. Offaly. The Education Centre will be used to host groups of school children, university students, researchers, and tour groups interested in learning about the fascinating science and engineering of I-LOFAR. The […]