Topic: Only the Brits could come up with this name

[Rik]

The BBC reports that:

The UK has officially opened its first station in a new international radio astronomy antenna network.

Lofar (Low Frequency Array) is a European project that incorporates new digital techniques to survey wide areas of the sky all at once.

The station in Chilbolton, Hampshire, joins similar sites in France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands.

[Simon]

Do astronomers wear lofars? 

[Rik]

We must ask Clive or Sam. 

[GillE]

Perhaps it was built on a 'you scrub my back, I'll scrub yours' arrangement.

[Rik]

[Clive]

Sam is very heavily into Lofar!   

[sam]

Do astronomers wear lofars? 

No.

[sam]

LOFAR is a primarily Dutch telescope, with the vast majority of the array elements in the Netherlands, the UK and Germany provide larger baselines with allows us to get better angular resolution in imaging.

LOFAR is a very important telescope and shows off some of the technology that will be used as part of the SKA too.. and the GMRT (a telescope in India) is pushing to produce a low frequency survey before LOFAR is fully online - nice to see lots of attention on the lower frequencies, what I did my thesis on.