Using its first station of distributed radio antennas, the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope has successfully detected the pulsar PSR B0329+54. The measurement took 15 minutes on 14 June and used only six of the prototype high-band antennas recently installed in the eastern part of the Netherlands. The results demonstrate the technical performance of the antennas.rnLOFAR will be the largest radio telescope ever built, using a new concept based on a vast array of simple omni-directional antennas. The idea is to digitize the signals before sending them to a central digital processor where software will combine them to create the effect of a large conventional antenna. When finished, it will consist of 15000 small antennas, distributed to more than 77 stations in the north east of the Netherlands and nearby parts of Germany. The array will operate at the lowest frequencies that can be observed from Earth, at 10-240 MHz. Plans exist for the extension of the array beyond its initial 100 km scale, by building stations further into Germany and also in the UK, France, Sweden, Poland and Italy.
展开▼
