Swedish LOFAR:John Conway

Hamburg, Sept 17th, 2008

• Onsala Space Observatory, Swedish national facility

for radio astronomy, provides access for Swedish astronomers to radio/mm- facilities.

• Separate low-freq effort led by IRF (see Bo Thide’s talk yesterday) – LOIS, alternative antenna design, experimental, look for POAM etc

• Onsala has long time involvement in interferometry, VLBI, ALMA etc.

• Involved with real-time VLBI interferometry over the internet since 2004. Synergy with LOFAR.

First Transatlantic Radio Interferometry, Onsala, January 1968

Using recorded media, definitely not real-time.

JANET

NetNorthWest

Jodrell Bank

JIVE + LOFAR.

FUNET

Metsähovi

SUNET

OnsalaNORDUnet routed IP

(simplified view)

GÉANT2

Rest ofSUNET

NORDUnet TSS Opto

TSS L2 Cloud

STO CSC

CPH

Rest ofFUNET

SurfNET

SUNETproject router

VLANs

HAM

Network Infrastructure- lots of cooperation with SUNET, NORDUNET

Data goes through Hamburg

Recent Internet Interferometry Progress

• In June 2008 demonstrated 4Gbps from Stockholm through to Jodrell Bank UK

• In July 2008 demonstrated 8Gbps from Onsala to Metsahovi in Finland (8 times higher data rate than disk recording!) Autocorrelation spectra on water masers

•Have up to 10Gbit/s capacity through to Netherlands so we can simultaneously send eVLBI and LOFAR data

Joint the centimetre and decametre wavelength interferometry communities

All invited to conference on Science and technology of real time interferometry.

Madrid, June 22-26t

2009

E-LOFAR

96 HBA tiles 96 LBAs

Inter-tile distance: 0.6m

Swedish station greatly helps NS uv coverage

LOFAR station at Onsala• Research council planning grant for 2006/2007 (600kKr = 70kEuro).

Meetings, RFI (radio frequency interference) test of our site by ASTRON–positive result

• November 2007 Swedish research council application from Onsala Space Observatory for funding a full LOFAR station was successful (6.8Mkr =720kEuro). ++

• Site identified, needs ’remodelling’ of landscape. Have applied for planning permission for blasting etc should get permission by early November at latest.

• Manpower, Network Engineer (EXPReS), new PhD student, Interferometry software support position (with ALMA)

Science Interest•Garrelt Mellema, EOR KSP – Stockholm

•John Conway, Extragalactic Survey KSP Local star-forming galaxies. Compact objects in nearby galaxies (SNe, SNR, AGN) links to proposed eMERLIN Legacy projects. Young radio galaxies (CSS/GPS) source statistics from MSSS. Göran Östlin, Nils Bergvall also potentially interested in surveys.

• Bo Thide, Solar and Space Weather KSP

•Other interests, Cluster sources, Transient stellar sources (Univ of Gothenburg). Recombination lines (John Black)

•Organising consortium meeting for late October in Stockholm

Onsala LOFAR site

OSO LOFAR – Site preparation

Picture showing area after site preparation

Rock blasted in 30deg el fromthe 70m d limit

340 + 80 m3 filling needed(reuse stone from the blasting)

About 1 hectare foresthave to be cut down

OSO LOFAR – Final configuration