LOFAR Swedish Station Begins Construction

By Nancy Atkinson - December 16, 2010 08:00 PM UTC | Telescopes

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Robert Cumming from the Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden sent us this image, letting us know that construction has officially begun for the Swedish station of the new LOFAR radio telescope. The LOw Frequency ARray is a multi-purpose sensor array, with its main purpose to search the sky at low frequencies (10-250 MHz) which will enable astronomers to see the fog of hydrogen gas that filled the universe during its first two hundred million years. It will also be able to image the regions around supermassive black holes in the centres of nearby galaxies. The headquarters are in the Netherlands, but eight stations will be spread over Europe.

This aerial photograph shows the Onsala LOFAR station site at the lower right. Behind, the white radome of the observatory's 20-metre telescope and the dish of the 25-meter telescope by the Kattegat shore.

The two circular areas where the LOFAR station's high-band (snow-covered) and low-band antennas will be placed are already flattened. The cold weather has delayed the next stage in the work, deploying the fibre cables, but the Onsala station should still be fully operational by mid-2011.

Onsala is LOFAR's northernmost station and will help give the array a close to circular beam. It will also contribute some of the array's longest baselines.

"Each LOFAR station collects and handles up to 32 terabytes of data every day," said John Conway, professor of observational radio astronomy at Chalmers University of Technology and Vice-Director of Onsala Space Observatory. " At Chalmers we're working together with our European colleagues to develop new kinds of software so that we can analyse radio signals from distant sources."

Onsala's LOFAR station will consist of 192 small antennas which together collect radio waves from space. The signals which are registered are then transferred by fiber link to the Netherlands to be combined with data from the other stations.

You can see more images from the Onsala Observatory at the Flickr page.

More information about LOFAR.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com