LOFAR ERIC opening celebration
On 20 December 2023 the European Commission adopted the decision to set up LOFAR ERIC. The LOFAR ERIC opening celebration is the festive marking of the start of LOFAR ERIC.
LOFAR
LOFAR is the largest and most sensitive radio telescope operating at low radio frequencies, between 10 and 240 MHz. It consists of antenna stations geographically distributed across Europe and driven in software by powerful station-level computing to produce a highly flexible and agile observing system. With a sensitivity more than 2 orders of magnitude better than any previous telescope at these frequencies, unparalleled angular resolution, an enormous field of view and multi-beam capabilities, LOFAR is by far the most powerful 100 MHz telescope on the planet and is revolutionising our view of the low-frequency radio universe.
LOFAR ERIC
LOFAR is by its nature a pan-European project, with 52 antenna stations located across 8 European countries: the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, France, Ireland, Latvia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The construction of 2 further international stations in Italy and Bulgaria is planned. The long international baselines arising from the distributed nature of LOFAR are essential to provide its unique high angular resolution.
LOFAR ERIC will provide a coordinating organisation to optimise the joint exploitation and to maximise the science output of the LOFAR facilities. Importantly, LOFAR ERIC will also ensure a united approach to ongoing and future upgrades to the facility. The staged upgrade called LOFAR2.0 will hugely enhance the capabilities of LOFAR, particularly at the lowest frequencies.
