LOFAR makes its deepest low-frequency radio image
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An international team led by Leiden University has produced the deepest, sharpest low-frequency radio image of the sky yet, according to Universe Today. It covers ELAIS-N1, a patch of northern sky with little dust, gas or foreground stars, and was made with the LOFAR radio array in the Netherlands.
The numbers: 63,000 radio sources, 200 hours of observation, 400 terabytes of data and an 8-billion-pixel image. Resolution is twenty times better than the previous LOFAR image of the field. The sources include quasars, the bright cores of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, and young galaxies forming stars quickly.
What made it possible is data processing. The article says the Spider platform, developed by ASTRON and partners and hosted at SURF, cut processing times by a factor of ten. Lead researcher Jurjen de Jong said the whole dataset could be processed in just a few months.
The sharper view also shows filaments around radio galaxies, especially near galaxy clusters, and jets that older surveys would have shown as featureless blobs. Radio waves pass through dust that blocks visible light, so the image also helps trace how early star-forming galaxies grew into the older ones nearby.
The team says the work shows what the upgraded LOFAR2.0, now being prepared by ASTRON and its European partners, could do.
Would you rather see a deeper image of one patch or a shallower one of the whole sky?