UCB Astronomy Journal Club
Friday February 8th 12:10 pm - 1:00 PM
544 Campbell Hall

Huub Rottgering
Leiden Observatory, Universiteit Leiden
The Netherlands

"LOFAR - Opening up a New Window on the Universe"

LOFAR, the Low Frequency Array, is a next-generation radio telescope
that is being built in Northern Europe and expected to be fully
operational at the end of this decade. It will operate at frequencies
from 15 to 240 MHz (corresponding to wavelengths of 20 to 1.2 m). Its
superb sensitivity, high angular resolution, large field of view and
flexible spectroscopic capabilities will represent a dramatic
improvement over previous facilities at these wavelengths. As such,
LOFAR will carry out a broad range of fundamental astrophysical
studies. The design of LOFAR has been driven by four fundamental
astrophysical applications: (i) The Epoch of Reionisation, (ii)
Extragalactic Surveys and their exploitation to study the formation
and evolution of clusters, galaxies and black holes, (iii) Transient
Sources and their association with high energy objects such as gamma
ray bursts, and (iv) Cosmic Ray showers and their exploitation to
study the origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. During this
contribution we will first present the LOFAR project with an emphasis
on the challenges faced when carrying out sensitive imaging at low
radio frequencies. Subsequently, we will discuss LOFAR's capabilities
to survey the low-frequency radio sky. Main aims for the planned
surveys are studies of z>6 radio galaxies, diffuse emission associated
with distant clusters and starbursting galaxies at z>2.