LOFAR ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) officially started on Monday at the first meeting of the Board of Directors. This provides a single legal entity in all countries of the European Union. The registered office is located in Dwingeloo, at ASTRON.
The world-leading LOFAR (LOW Frequency ARray) distributed research infrastructure has already revolutionized research in low-frequency radio astronomy; this has led to a flood of scientific publications in the past ten years.
LOFAR ERIC will significantly upgrade its distributed infrastructure and serve the astronomy community with an advanced suite of observation and data processing capabilities, based on its vast field of view on the sky, unprecedented sensitivity and image resolution, and new capabilities to observe simultaneously in multiple directions . Further longer-term development paths are being investigated.
Transparent access
Designed with a long-term perspective, LOFAR ERIC will provide transparent access to a wide range of scientific research services for the European and global community, foster collaborations and enable researchers to pursue large-scale, innovative projects across scientific domains. Examples include the properties of the distant early universe, the formation and evolution of galaxies, the physics of pulsars and variable radio phenomena, the nature of ultra-high-energy cosmic particles, the conditions in the interstellar medium, and the structure of cosmic magnetic fields. In addition, LOFAR ERIC contributes unique scientific insights to topics of great social relevance, such as lightning, ionospheric disturbances and space weather. LOFAR ERIC will facilitate access through its user-friendly publicly accessible archive for the use of its extensive scientific data.
The countries that established LOFAR ERIC are Bulgaria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. Collaborations with institutes in France, Latvia, Sweden and the United Kingdom ensure further participation in LOFAR’s distributed infrastructure and research program. The registered office of LOFAR ERIC is located in Dwingeloo, the Netherlands, at the host institute NWO-I/ASTRON (Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy; the original designer of LOFAR).
Robbert Dijkgraaf
Minister of Education, Culture and Science Robbert Dijkgraaf is proud that the Netherlands is the host of LOFAR ERIC: ‘What started years ago as a mainly Dutch facility has grown into a fully-fledged distributed research infrastructure with antenna stations throughout Europe. This powerhouse in the European research landscape will stimulate new research collaborations across Europe. New and exciting discoveries will be made about the origins and composition of our universe. I’m really looking forward to it.’
“The establishment of LOFAR ERIC consolidates world-leading excellence for Europe in an important research field,” says Dr. René Vermeulen, founding director of LOFAR ERIC. ‘With its unparalleled distributed research infrastructure and its robust pan-European partnership, LOFAR ERIC joins the European Research Area as a powerhouse at the forefront of astronomical science and technology, with the potential to contribute to broader complex challenges.’