ERICs are independent legal entities, operating as international organizations. Promoting excellence, these consortia play a crucial role in the development of collaborative research in Europe.
The founding members of ERIC "International LOFAR Telescope" are Bulgaria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland, while institutions in France, Latvia, Sweden and the UK are collaborating members of ERIC.
Together, they develop and ensure the scientific operation of the LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) radio telescope, an infrastructure made up of stations (51 at present), centered in the Netherlands and distributed throughout the other countries.
![<multi>[fr]Le radiotélescope LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray)[en]The LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) radio telescope</multi>](IMG/jpg/panneauramique2_1_1_.jpg)
LOFAR is - together with NenuFAR - the largest and most sensitive radio telescope observing the lowest frequencies accessible from the ground, from 10 to 240 MHz.
The stations are linked at very high bit-rate to an intensive digital computing structure responsible for combining their signals, and to several distributed data centers. Together, they form an agile and powerful observation system, 100 times more sensitive than other instruments in this frequency range, with very high resolution of the images and spectra produced, a very wide field of view and the ability to point in several directions simultaneously.
ERIC will enable the construction and operation of a completely renovated instrument, LOFAR 2.0, which will integrate NenuFAR as a "super station" with enhanced sensitivity.
Observatoire de Paris - PSL is collaborating on ERIC as part of a consortium of French researchers, alongside CNRS and Université d’Orléans.
Together, they operate a LOFAR station at the Observatoire Radioastronomique de Nançay, as well as the new NenuFAR instrument. Optimized for the lowest part of the radio spectrum (10-85 MHz), NenuFAR combines some 2,000 antennas. It has been operating as a stand-alone instrument since 2022, and will be able to operate simultaneously and independently as a LOFAR 2.0 superstation, boosting its performance considerably.