The LOFAR telescope comprises of 50 sites across Europe, including this station near the Dutch village of Exloo Astron

The biggest telescope in the world is getting an extension in Ireland. That's the location of the latest station in LOFAR, a network of high-resolution radio antennae that forms a telescope stretching across Europe.

"LOFAR spans 1,900km, from southern Poland to central Ireland. It's the largest telescope in the world," says Peter Gallagher, professor of astrophysics at Trinity College Dublin, and head of the Irish consortium for LOFAR, which stands for "Low-Frequency Array".


The football-field-sized Irish station will extend the range of the 50-site LOFAR by 30 per cent. All the stations in the 10,000-antenna network transmit their data back to LOFAR's processing centre in Exloo in the Netherlands (above), where the signals are combined to create a high-resolution image of the sky. "LOFAR will allow us to study star formations, exoplanets, solar physics, magnetic fields and the early universe," says Gallagher, 42. Dutch-led LOFAR was set up in 2010 to monitor radio frequencies below 250 megahertz, but astronomers have recently discovered it can also function as a particle detector.

Located at Birr Castle in County Offaly, home of the Leviathan telescope in the 1840s, the Irish LOFAR station will benefit from the site's low level of radio-frequency interference, says Gallagher. The station, which is funded by a €1.4 million (£1.1m) award from the Science Foundation Ireland, philanthropic grants and private donations, is due to be completed in spring 2017. Italy, Latvia and Bulgaria are also looking into opening stations. "One country couldn't have done it," Gallagher says. "Many nations together can do so much more."