EVN Seminar: The highest resolution at the lowest radio frequencies: the LOFAR view of the radio sky

Series of online seminars “Exploring the sharpest view of the universe with the EVN”.

Full information at https://www.evlbi.org/evn-seminars.

In this seminar, our speaker, Leah Morabito (UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at Durham University) will talk about “The highest resolution at the lowest radio frequencies: the LOFAR view of the radio sky”.

Abstract:
The LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) is a radio interferometer with antennas in nine European countries. Its geographic spread of almost 2,000km provides a large effective 'lens'. With this, we can make images with exquisite resolution at low radio frequencies. We do this by combining the signals from all these distant antennas, a technique known as very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). VLBI with LOFAR is very challenging. Over the past few years we have developed special calibration techniques for VLBI with LOFAR. These new techniques are now used for a wide variety of science cases which would not otherwise be possible. We have now extended these techniques to image large areas of the sky, which provides a unique combiantion of resolution and field of view. In this talk I will provide a general introduction to LOFAR, and an overview of the challenges in making high resolution images. I will walk through how we overcome these challenges and show examples of our breakthrough successes and recent science results. I will finish by providing an overview on current and future plans. These include a Northen sky survey which will have higher resolution than any previous wide-area radio survey.

Видео EVN Seminar: The highest resolution at the lowest radio frequencies: the LOFAR view of the radio sky канала JIVE and the EVN