During the period from March 19 to 23, VIRAC staff members were on a mission in Leiden, the Netherlands, where they participated in the seminar “High Resolution Imaging with International LOFAR”. The purpose of this training is to enhance the competence of VIRAC staff in the processing and imaging of radio frequency data acquired by the LOFAR array of low frequency aerial arrays.

Over the course of the week, the staff attended several lectures on LOFAR signal retardation and high-resolution imaging provided by experts and scientists in the field:

“Science with high-resolution surveys”, Martin Hardcastle;

“High resolution imaging with LOFAR”, Neal Jackson;

“High resolution results: XMM-LSS”, Leah Morabito;

“High resolution results: Young Stellar Objects”, Rachael Ainsworth;

“The Long Baseline pipeline”, Marco Iacobelli;

“Building phase screens with Bayesian methods”, Josh Albert;

“The CASA Fringe-fitter”, Ilse van Bemmel;

“LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey: status + lessons learned”, Tim Shimwell;

“High resolution processing of LoTSS”, Leah Morabito;

“Imaging strategies / products”, Neal Jackson.

Using the knowledge gained in the lectures, VIRAC staff participated in the practical work with the newly established “CASA fringe-fitter”. In addition, to verify the performance of the new LOFAR data server in Irbene, radioastronomic data processing was successfully performed on this server.