Jodrell Bank Telescope

2014Apr03 by Eric Emms

I visited Jodrell Bank as a member of a group organised by Friends of the Royal Astronomical Society, to see the famous Lovell Telescope, hear a talk from the Director Prof Simon Garrington and visit the Control Room of the observatory.

The dominant feature of The Jodrell Bank Observatory is of course the radio telescope, one of the world’s largest, known as the Lovell telescope

Walking up close to the telescope one is struck by its sheer size and the beauty of its design.

Notices scattered along the footpath tell you to switch off your mobile phones as signals would interfere with the radio signals collected and relate simple facts about the work of the telescope. 

The  Discovery Centre which receives thousands of visitors is home to exhibits and visual presentations describing basic astronomical concepts.

Prof Garrington’s illustrated talk described the present set-up of the observatory, its early work and its current importance as the organisational ‘hub’ of present national array of radio telescopes across England (e-Merlin) and in the future international radio astronomical research (SKA). 

The conclusion of our trip was a visit to the Control Room, where the BBC Stargazing Live TV programme is filmed. A brief illustrated talk by a resident radio- astronomer explained how radio signal data collected at the observatory are processed to produce a meaningful image of the target radio source to resolutions in the order of microarcseconds, as good as or better than the resolution seen in Hubble optical images.

Thanks to Marcus Hope of Friends of the RAS  for organising the trip.