Jodrell Bank Observatory - Just the facts (A article written in 2007)
The Jodrell Bank Observatory (originally the Jodrell Bank Experimental Station, then the Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories from 1966 to 1999) is an observatory that hosts a number of radio telescopes, & is part of the University of Manchester. It is located near Goostrey & Holmes Chapel in Cheshire in the north-west of England. It has played an important role in the research of quasars & pulsars. In 1979, scientists at Jodrell Bank announced the first detection of a gravitational lens, which confirmed Einstein's theory of general relativity.
The observatory was established in 1945 by Dr. Bernard Lovell (now Sir Bernard Lovell), who wanted to investigate cosmic rays after his work on radar in World War II. One of the telescopes of the observatory honours his name.
Jodrell Bank Observatory is also the base of the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN), a National Facility run by the University of Manchester on behalf of PPARC.
Timeline of Jodrell Bank Observatory
The Jodrell Bank site was first used for academic purposes in 1939, when the
University of Manchester's horticultural botany department purchased three fields
at Jodrell Bank. The site was named after a ground rise called Jodrell Bank, which
was named after a landowning family called Jodrell or Jauderell who lived in a
mansion that is now Terra Nova School (also see William Jauderell). The site was
extended in 1952 by the purchase of a farm from a local farmer, George Massey.
The new land included the site upon which the Mark I was sited.
The first use of the site for astrophysics was in 1945, when Bernard Lovell wished to use some radar equipment left over from World War II to investigate cosmic rays. Electrical interference from the trams that then ran down Oxford Road prevented him from doing so in Manchester, so he moved the equipment to Jodrell Bank, 25 miles (40 km) south of the city. His main focus at the time was the radio echoes from ionized meteor trails. Over the next few years, he accumulated more ex-military radio hardware, including a portable cabin, commonly known as a "Park Royal" in the military. The first permanent building on the site was located near to this cabin, & was named after it.
The first major radio telescope on the site, a wire paraboloid 218ft (66m) in diameter called the Transit Telescope, was built in 1947.
The famous "Mark I" telescope, now known as the Lovell Telescope, was the largest steerable dish radio telescope in the world, 76.2 m (250 ft) in diameter, when it was constructed in the mid 1950s. It became operational in the summer of 1957, just in time for the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite. Jodrell Bank was the only installation in the world able to track Sputnik's booster rocket by radar, & the fame & income this brought in enabled the considerable construction debts to be paid off.
In February 1966, Jodrell Bank tracked the USSR unmanned moon lander Luna 9 & listened in on its facsimile transmission of photographs from the moon's surface. The photos were sent to the British press & published before the Soviets themselves had made the photos public.
Jodrell Bank Arboretum
A view of the telescope from the Arboretum.The 35 acre (140,000 m²)
Jodrell Bank Arboretum houses the UK's national collections of Malus & Sorbus
species, as well as the Heather Society's Calluna collection. The arboretum also
features a small scale model of the solar system, the scale being approximately
1:5,000,000,000. As part of the SpacedOut project, Jodrell Bank is also the location
of the Sun in a 1:15,000,000 scale model of the solar system covering the UK.
There
is an educational visitors' centre at the site, which covers the history of Jodrell
Bank & also has a 3D theatre hosting trips to Mars. There is also a path around
the Lovell telescope, approximately 20m from the telescope's outer railway, which
hosts a number of information boards explaining how the telescope works &
the research that is done with it.
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