'We used to throw away LOFAR measurements taken during thunderstorms. They were too messy.' says astronomer Pim Schellart. 'Well, we didn't actually throw them away of course, we just didn't analyze them.' Schellart, who completed his PhD in March this year at Radboud University in Nijmegen and is supervised by Prof. Heino Falcke, is interested in cosmic rays. These high-energy particles, originating from exploding stars and other astrophysical sources, continuously bombard Earth from space.
High in the atmosphere these particles strike atmospheric molecules and create 'showers' of elementary particles. These showers can also be measured from the radio emission that is generated when their constituent particles are deflected by the magnetic field of Earth. The radio emission also gives information about the original particles. These measurements are routinely conducted with LOFAR at ASTRON in Dwingeloo, but not during thunderstorms.
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