Note that I am now at the MPIfR. The AIfA email will still work for some time, but the office address has changed.
The first image above shows the field of 3C196 imaged with stations in the Netherlands only. The resolution of about 11 arcsec is not sufficient to resolve any details. By including international stations in Tautenburg (Germany), Nancay (France) and Chilbolton (UK) in the second image, the resolution is improved by a factor of 30 (0.35 arcsec) so that we can not only distinguish the two compact components with 5.5 arcsec separation but even resolve structures within each of them.
LOFAR is finally entering true sub-arcsec territory.
12 h of observing time with 1/4 of the full bandwidth covering the range 120-165 MHz were used to produce these images. By observing at even higher frequencies, the resolution can be improved by another factor of 2.
See press releases of ASTRON (or in Dutch), STFC (UK), Nancay Observatory (in French), Onsala Space Observatory (in Swedish).
At lower frequencies (30-80 MHz), the source was already resolved in 2010 using stations in the Netherlands and Germany:
Only the rather compact upper and lower components can be seen in the high-resolution version shown before.
For more details of these previous results, see press releases of the MPIfR (or the German version), the Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg (in German), the MPA (or the German version), ASTRON, or the ASTRON/JIVE Daily Image of 1st June 2010.
LOFAR LBG (long baseline group)
Optical image deconvolution
Usually my list of publications is more up to date than these overviews of research topics. For projects not yet published in refereed journals (quite many actually), please also consult the list of conference contributions and seminars and colloquia.
Phone: +49-(0)228-525-481 e-mail: wucknitz(at)mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
e-mail: wucknitz(at)astro.uni-bonn.de