This title appears in the Scientific Report :
2016
Please use the identifier:
http://hdl.handle.net/2128/10416 in citations.
LOFAR: Calibration and Imaging on JURECA
LOFAR: Calibration and Imaging on JURECA
The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) is a novel radio telescope, operating at very low radio frequencies. It uses a large frequency bandwidth and many stations comprising a multitude of simple dipole antennas. LOFAR stations are relatively small, giving them a large field-of-view(FoV). Moreover, the stat...
Saved in:
Personal Name(s): | Hoeft, M. (Corresponding author) |
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Horneffer, A. / Drabent, A. / Fröhlich, Stefan | |
Contributing Institute: |
Jülich Supercomputing Center; JSC John von Neumann - Institut für Computing; NIC |
Published in: |
NIC Symposium 2016 |
Imprint: |
Jülich
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Zentralbibliothek
2016
|
Physical Description: |
69-76 |
Conference: | NIC Symposium 2016, Jülich (Germany), 2016-02-11 - 2016-02-12 |
Document Type: |
Contribution to a conference proceedings |
Research Program: |
Computational Science and Mathematical Methods |
Series Title: |
NIC Series
48 |
Link: |
OpenAccess OpenAccess |
Publikationsportal JuSER |
The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) is a novel radio telescope, operating at very low radio frequencies. It uses a large frequency bandwidth and many stations comprising a multitude of simple dipole antennas. LOFAR stations are relatively small, giving them a large field-of-view(FoV). Moreover, the stations are distributed over many European countries, which gives LOFAR a superb image resolution. With its large bandwidth, large collecting area, large FoV, and high spatial resolution LOFAR achieves unprecedented sensitivity, resolution and in particular high survey speed at this little explored frequency range. The LOFAR data processing is realised via digital electronics starting from the signals of individual dipoles. Each station produces a tremendous amount of data to be sent to a central correlator via fast internet connections, which again leads lo huge amounts of data to be processed further. For LOFAR the analysis is complicated by the ionosphere which can severely disturb the observations. Moreover, the simplicity of the antenna fields introduces distortions that need to be corrected when processing the data. Traditionally, the analysis of radio interferometer data has been carried out interactively on work stations. The enormous amounts of data produced by LOFAR and the complex data reduction schemes demand much larger computing resources and automated processes. The data reduction, thus, needs to be carried out on supercomputers. Our aim is to adapt the LOFAR software for analysing data on JURECA, to develop a framework which allows astronomers to set up a data reduction including observation specifics. Moreover, with selected observations we demonstrate the feasibility of reducing LOFAR data on general-purpose, multi-user supercomputers such as JURECA. The algorithms developed for LOFAR pave the way to a new generation of powerful radio telescopes at low frequencies. |