On 12 June 2020, LOFAR celebrates its 10th anniversary. Ten years to the day ago, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands inaugurated the telescope and witnessed the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding with the international partners. The LOFAR telescope is the world’s largest low-frequency instrument and is one of the pathfinders of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which is currently being developed. Throughout its ten years of operation, LOFAR has made some amazing discoveries. It has been a key part of groundbreaking research and development, both in astronomy and engineering.
Operating six international LOFAR stations, hosting a large part of the instrument’s long-term archive and providing computing resources on the JUWELS supercomputer at the FZ Jülich, GLOW member institutes have since the beginning been a key partner in developing the array and participated in many of the pioneering research projects. You can find some of the recent achievements on our Science Highlights page.
Crucial for the German participation was BMBF funding via the “Verbundforschung für erdgebundene Astrophysik’’ as well as substantial contribution by the Max-Planck society, the Thuringian state observatory and a number of universities.
LOFAR is not getting old, its next level is currently under development. Framed as LOFAR 2.0, the telescope is going to increase its efficiency and sensitivity to remain the leading low-frequency telescope with unmatched angular resolution for the next decade.
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