Radio Galaxy Zoo: LOFAR

Erik Osinga (Project Manager)

I am a first-year PhD student at the University of Leiden. I am mainly interested in galaxy clusters, which are some of the largest gravitationally bound objects in the Universe. To study galaxy clusters successfully, it is important to know the distance to the radio sources that are presented in this project, which is why finding the optical counterpart of the sources is critical!

Martin Hardcastle (Project Scientist)

I'm Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, and work mostly on radio-loud active galaxies, where the radio emission is due to powerful jets coming from close to a galaxy's central black hole. These interact with the environment to make complex structures, many of which you'll see in this project. By creating large samples of active galaxies we can assess what effect they have on their environment and how they evolve over cosmic time.

Hugh Dickinson

I'm a postdoctoral researcher working at the Open University in the UK. Over the years I've worked on all sorts of topics related to astrophysics. I started off searching for elusive Very High Energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission from X-ray binaries, which sometimes look a bit like scaled-down versions of the radio galaxies this project focusses on. Later, I investigated the VHE emission from active galaxies with jets that point straight towards us, which we call Blazars. Nowadays, I research how star formation in galaxies proceeded at different stages in the history of the Universe.

Rafaël Mostert

As a PhD student at Leiden University & ASTRON, I try to find physically distinct radio galaxy populations by clustering radio galaxies based on their morphology. Studying different populations can give us insight into the different stages within a galaxy's life-cycle.
In order to do proper clustering, it is essential to have correctly associated radio components.

Valentina Missaglia

I am currently a PhD student at the University of Turin, Italy. My research project focuses on the analysis of radio-loud active galaxies as seen in LOFAR. In particular, I am interested in radio sources with bent jets (i.e., the so called wide-angle tail radio galaxies, WATs). As part of this project, you will see many of this peculiar sources with low luminosity tails that only LOFAR can detect! Associating the components correlated with the radio source will help us to have a better idea of the extension of these sources.

Błażej Nikiel-Wroczyński

I work as an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. As an astrophysicist, I mostly seek radio-emitting, compact galaxy groups, and other, low-quantity systems of interacting galaxies. Galaxy groups are very common in the Universe, yet our knowledge about their emission at radio wavelengths is rather scarce. Extending it can only be done by the means of analysis of a large sample of such objects, and looking for common and uncommon features of the ones included in.

Aleksander Kurek

I got my PhD degree in 2017 at the Jagiellonian University. Since then I work at LOFARs PL611 station maintaining the software and researching pulsars and galaxies.

Stanisław Ryś

I've been a doctor of astronomy since 1991. I took part in the GB3 survey data reduction and worked on models of asymmetry observed in double radio structures. Currently I am working on data reduction of the Torun Polarimetric Survey (ToPoS).

Isabella Prandoni

I'm a senior astronomer at the Radioastronomy Institute (INAF) in Italy. I mostly work with deep radio surveys, like the LOFAR survey you are dealing with right now. In particular I'm interested in better understanding the physics and cosmic evolution of active galactic nuclei and star-forming galaxies. With your help we will be able to associate the radio emission to a host galaxy and get a better view of the mechanisms responsible for such emission: stars or super-massive black holes.

John Quinn

I am an Associate Professor of Physics at University College Dublin where I conduct research in High-Energy Astrophysics. I am primarily a gamma-ray astronomer and have just recently started to do radio astronomy with LOFAR. My research focuses on a subset of Active Galaxies known as Blazars, which are believed to be galaxies, powered by supermassive black holes, with powerful jets pointed towards the Earth. There are many unanswered questions about how Active Galaxies form and evolve, and this project will provide us with important pieces of the puzzle.

Sean Mooney

Sean is in the final year of his PhD in astrophysics at University College Dublin. Radio galaxies come in all shapes and sizes, and Sean's research has focused on trying to understand why this is. Your clicks help shed light on this question.

Acknowledgements

ESCAPE - The European Science Cluster of Astronomy & Particle Physics ESFRI Research Infrastructures has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement n° 824064.

We acknowledge support from the VIDI research programme with project number 639.042.729 (PI: van Weeren), which is financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)

The acknowledgements related to the LOFAR-survey team can be accessed here

We kindly acknowledge the Legacy survey from which the optical images are taken. A full acknowlegement can be read here.