Telescopes Working Before 'First Light'
Department:
Astrotech
Teaser:
"These days it's not unusual for professional observatories to become operational months, if not years, before their formal 'first light' ceremony. That's the situation with two new and very different facilities situated half a world apart."
Link:
Source:
SkyandTelescope.com's Most Recent Blog Postings Download time: Jun 25 2010 9:17 AM ET
These days it's not unusual for professional observatories to become operational months, if not years, before their formal "first light" ceremony. That's the situation with two new and very different facilities situated half a world apart.
For several years a team at ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, has been building the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a widespread network of receivers to probe the radio sky at very long wavelengths. The first LOFAR station (with 96 antennas) came online in 2006, and since then the system has grown to include stations spread across 36 fields in the north of the Netherlands and also in Germany, Sweden, France and the United Kingdom — 25,000 antennas in all!
At a June 12th ceremony, the Netherlands' Queen Beatrix pushed a button to mark the official start of LOFAR's scientific observations. (I'm sure it was a nice ceremony, but LOFAR's first high-resolution image had already been released two weeks earlier).…
See SkyandTelescope.com's Most Recent Blog Postings for links to further info.
Also see this Dome News item and this one.
