Timeline
In the early 1990s, the study of aperture array technology for radio astronomy was being actively studied by ASTRON - the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. At the same time, scientific interest in a low-frequency radio telescope began to emerge at ASTRON and at the Dutch Universities. A feasibility study was carried out and international partners sought during 1999. In 2000 the Netherlands LOFAR Steering Committee was set up by the ASTRON Board with representatives from all interested Dutch university departments and ASTRON.
In November 2003 the Dutch Government allocated 52 million euro to fund the infrastructure of LOFAR under the Bsik programme. In accordance with Bsik guidelines, LOFAR was funded as a multidisciplinary sensor array that will facilitate research in geophysics, computer sciences and agriculture as well as astronomy.
In December 2003 LOFAR's Initial Test Station (ITS) became operational; this was an important milestone in the LOFAR development. The ITS system consists of 60 inverse V-shaped dipoles; each dipole is connected to a low-noise amplifier (LNA), which provides enough amplification of the incoming signals to transport them over a 110 m long coaxial cable to the receiver unit (RCU).
On April 26, 2005, an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer was installed at the University of Groningen's math center, for LOFAR's data processing. At that time it was the second most powerful supercomputer in Europe, after the MareNostrum in Barcelona.
In August/September 2006 the first LOFAR station (Core Station CS001, aka. CS1 52°54′32″N 6°52′8″E / 52.90889°N 6.86889°E / 52.90889; 6.86889) has been put in the field using pre-production hardware. A total of 96 dual-dipole antennas (the equivalent of a full LOFAR station) are grouped in four clusters, the central cluster with 48 dipoles and other three clusters with 16 dipoles each. Each cluster is about 100 m in size. The clusters are distributed over an area of ~500 m in diameter.
In November 2007 the first international LOFAR station (DE601) next to the Effelsberg 100 m radio telescope became the first operational station. The first fully complete station, (CS302) on the edge of the LOFAR core, was delivered in May 2009, with a total of 40 Dutch stations scheduled for completion in 2011. By mid 2011, 30 stations in the Netherlands, five stations in Germany (Effelsberg, Tautenburg, Unterweilenbach, Bornim/Potsdam, and Jülich), one in the UK (Chilbolton) and one in France (Nançay) were operational.
LOFAR was officially opened on 12 June 2010 by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
Read more about this topic: LOFAR