It’s not long after noon at Jodrell Bank; a warning siren shrieks, cutting through the white Cheshire sky. Outside the high windows of the control room, the Lovell Telescope begins to move – almost imperceptibly at first. It is 90 metres high, nearly 80 metres across and weighs roughly 3,200 tonnes, and yet as it begins to turn, the great bowl to tip, it is, extraordinarily, nearly completely silent. Somehow the silence makes its movement all the more awesome, nearly preternatural; though for the astronomers and engineers here nothing particularly extraordinary is happening. The telescope is being “parked” – its face pointing straight to the sky – so that an adjustment can be made to the equipment at the top of the focus tower; something not working quite as it should. A little team, wearing hard hats, sets off to go up into the dish.
Watching with us through the glass is Sir Bernard Lovell, after whom the telescope is now named. Fifty years ago and more he imagined this place might exist and, with the support of the University of Manchester and the help of an indefatigable engineer called Charles Husband, he brought it into being. Since that time it has been at the forefront of radio astronomy, so much so that the science as it is now would be totally unrecognisable to those who, decades ago, approved the audacious project. As Lovell says: “If I had mentioned any of the objects which the telescope is studying now they would have thought I was crazy. The very words were unknown: quasars, pulsars, gravitational lenses and so on. Such is the advance of science. It was difficult, you know, when I was proposing this telescope, to persuade people that it would be useful astronomically in 15 years’ time – and the engineers said it would be lucky if it lasted that long. That was 50 years ago. So as often in science, the solution of one problem creates another – everywhere. It seems that one can never reach finality.” But now the Jodrell Bank faces just that finality. The observatory could be closed after proposals to cut funding for an array of radio telescopes, including this dish, were announced this week because of an £80million shortfall.
No Comments