The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) is the world’s largest and most sensitive low frequency radio telescope and a prominent national and international scientific facility. Thanks to its spectral coverage (10-250 MHz) and resolution, it has opened up new areas of studies in astrophysics ranging from the early Universe to transient phenomena, pulsars, solar studies, and galaxy clusters science. After initial processing, the data from the telescope are sent to the LOFAR long-term archive (LTA) for open distribution to the Worldwide community. More than 50 PB of data (~43 PB publicly available) have been delivered to the community through the LTA. Due to intrinsic challenges related to the reduction of low-frequency data, LOFAR has so far attracted mostly expert users and thus its scientific impact has been hindered. Innovative techniques are now available to efficiently and automatically handle these challenges, therefore ASTRON is preparing to offer services to generate science-ready data, which will attract a much wider community of users. This will generate a dramatic increase of the science output from the instrument. This is the aim of the LOFAR Data Valorization (LDV) project, which will apply the innovative reduction routines on all the LOFAR data hosted at SURFsara (~28 PB). The LDV project will follow a staged approach and will last for 3 years. In this proposal, we request SURFsara resources for the first two years of the project to increase the value of the data in the LTA and prepare it for very low frequency (~ 50 MHz) and long-baseline science. Resources for the final step of the project will be requested in a follow-up proposal. LDV will have close and crucial interaction with various granted projects, like EGI-ACE, DICE, ESCAPE, and FUSE. These will help bring to a production level the processing routines and infrastructures currently under development. In this proposal, we request 1,500,000 core hours, 1,100 TB of disk storage, and 600 TB of temporary tape capacity in addition to resources that can be allocated from associated projects to enable a successful conclusion of the initial two phases of the LDV project.

The Dutch-built Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) is a unique radio telescope that brings together the signals from tens of thousands of antennas spread across the Netherlands and Europe. By removing various bottlenecks in data transport and data processing, we will unlock the full potential of LOFAR to make both sharp and wide-field images of radio waves arriving from outer space. We will study, for example, how stars form over cosmic time and how exoplanets are influenced by their parent star. We will also capture rare explosions from merging stars and study the extremes of the Universe.

The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) is the world’s largest and most sensitive low frequency radio telescope with unprecedented spectral coverage (10-250 MHz) and resolution. After initial processing, the astronomical data are sent to the LOFAR long-term archive (LTA, currently hosting about 54 PB of data) for distribution to the Worldwide community. The LOFAR Data Valorization (LDV) project will apply innovative reduction routines to the data hosted at SURF, making LOFAR more accessible to users, increasing its science output, and reducing the data volume.

The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) is the world’s largest and most sensitive low frequency radio telescope with unprecedented spectral coverage (10-250 MHz) and resolution. After initial processing, the astronomical data are sent to the LOFAR long-term archive (LTA, currently hosting about 55 PB of data) for distribution to the Worldwide community. The LOFAR Data Valorization (LDV) project will apply innovative reduction routines to the data hosted at SURF, making LOFAR more accessible to users, increasing its science output, and reducing the data volume.