LOFAR Radio Telescope Becomes Consortium for European Research Infrastructure (ERIC)

The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) is the world’s largest radio telescope for the reception of short and ultrashort radio waves. LOFAR was previously organized as a Dutch foundation and is now being transformed into an international legal form: a consortium for a European research infrastructure. The European Commission decided to set up LOFAR as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) due to the Europe-wide significance of the radio telescope. LOFAR ERIC was officially established at the first meeting of the LOFAR ERIC Council on 22 January 2024.

The Jülich Supercomputing Centre has been involved in LOFAR in a variety of ways since 2009. It not only houses and operates the German part of the extensive LOFAR archive, which is the largest radio astronomy archive in Germany, but is also co-operator of the station in front of the Daubenrath entrance southeast of the campus and manages central network activities within the German LOFAR consortium.

LOFAR ERIC will significantly modernize the radio telescope’s distributed infrastructure and serve the astronomy community with a cutting-edge suite of observing and data processing capabilities.

More information can be found in the press release.

Contact: Cristina Manzano, Dr. Arpad Miskolczi