Jodrell Bank telescopes

This page aims to list telescopes that are at, have been at, were run by or were constructed by Jodrell Bank Observatory [1], Cheshire, England, along with partial timelines of both the history of the telescopes and the science done by them. It is a work in progress, and hence is currently incomplete.

It focuses mostly on the technical milestones and major observations made with the telescopes. A complete list of all of the observations made with the telescope would be a) impossible to nail down completely, b) very long, and probably c) not very interesting to most people.

Contents

Current telescopes

Lovell telescope

Also see the Wikipedia article "Lovell Telescope"

Original building cost: £700,000 (1950's).[1] Upgrade to Mark IA cost £600,000 (1970's).[1] New surface in 2002 cost £2-3 million.

Date Event
1948 Genesis of the idea of a transit telescope-like instrument that could be pointed at any point of the sky.[1]
8 September 1949 Lovell meets Husband for the first time.[1][1]
1950 Gun turret racks from Royal Sovereign and Revenge purchased.[1]
1950 First drawings
20 March 1951 Application for telescope submitted (inc. Blue Book).[1][1]
March 1952 Funding approved (£335,000 from DSIR and the Nuffield Foundation).[1]
3 September 1952 Construction began.[1]
21 May 1953 Foundation piles completed.[1][1]
February 1954 Lovell discusses with the Air Ministry about funding for improving the accuracy of the dish so that it could be used on centimeter wavelengths, for research at these wavelengths for the Ministry, as well as "other purposes". Funding not made available, but plans already put in place for the improvements.[1]
Mid-March 1954 double railway track completed.[1][1]
6 May 1954 Focus access tower concept scrapped (was going to enable access to the focus when the dish was inverted; became unnecessary as much of the equipment was placed at the base of the telescope).[1]
11 May 1954 Central pivot delivered.[1]
23 January 1955 Realisation that oscillations could be set up in the telescope by wind, which could destroy the telescope at mean wind speeds of 40 mph. Ultimately solved by adding a "bicycle wheel" to the telescope.[1]
Mid-April 1955 Final bogie delivered to site.[1] Telescope under construction
Support structure for the bowl's surface completed.[1]
3 February 1957 Telescope moves for the first time (by an inch!)[1]
11 April 1957 Control console arrived and was wired up.[1]
12 June 1957 Telescope moves azimuthally under power for the first time.[1]
20 June 1957 Bowl tilted under power for the first time.[1]
End of July 1957 Telescope surface finished.[1]
2 August 1957 First recording/light (160MHz, bowl at the zenith, looked across the plane of the Milky Way).[1]
9 October 1957 Telescope is remotely controlled from the control room for the first time.[1][1]
12 October 1957
(just before midnight) 		Tracked the carrier rocket of Sputnik 1.[1][1]
16 November 1957
(just after midnight) 		Produced a radio echo from the carrier rocket of Sputnik 2. (NB: ref says October, but that doesn't fit into timeline - rocket was launched 2 November 1947)[1]
11-13 October 1958 Tracked Pioneer 1[1][1]
Autumn 1958 Telescope used to bounce "Hellos" off the Moon, for a demonstration in Lovell's third Reith Lecture.[1]
December 1958 Tracked Pioneer 3[1]
March 1959 Tracked Pioneer 4, the first U.S. manmade "planet".[1]
13-14 September 1959 Tracked Lunik II as it hit the moon. The tracking provided proof that the probe did indeed hit the moon - the effect of the moon's gravity on the probe could be seen.[1][1][1][1][1]
September 1959 Used as a radar with 50kW of transmitted power, aimed at Venus to measure the Earth-Venus distance.[1]
4 October 1959 Tracked Lunik 3, the first probe to the far side of the moon.[1][1][1][1]
11 March 1960 Tracked the Pioneer V probe. Also sent commands (including the one to separate the probe from its carrier rocket, and the ones to turn on the more powerful transmitter when the probe was 8 million miles away) and received data from the probe.[1][1][1][1]
14 March 1960 Sets a new space record for the furthest contact with a space probe - Pioneer V at a distance of 407,000 miles.[1]
25 May 1960 Lord Nuffield pays off the remaining debt on the telescope; site renamed to "The Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories, Jodrell Bank".[1]
26 June 1960 Last contact with Pioneer V, at a distance of over 22.4 million miles[1] or 36.2 million kilometers.[1]
April 1961 A radar echo from Venus is achieved using the telescope while the planet is at a close approach, confirming measurements of the distance of the planet made by american telescopes.[1][1]
27 April, 19-20 May 1961 Telescope possibly detected signals from a russian satellite en route to Venus (Vinera 1) that was launched on 12 February. However, it was not possible to confirm the origin of the signals.[1]
1962-3 Tracked Mars 1[1]
April 1962 to
September 1963 		Telescope on standby for "Project Verify" (also known by the codewords "Lothario" and "Changlin"); during strategic alerts, a 'pulse transmitter, receiver and display equipment' could be connected to the telescope to scan known launch sites for indications of launches of ICBMs and/or IRBMs.[1][1]
October 1962 Telescope discretely turned towards the Iron Curtain during the Cuban Missile Crisis to provide a few minute's warning of any missiles that might have been launched then. (NB: ref has wrong year(?))[1]
December 1962 Tracked and received data from Mariner 2.[1][1]
Febrary/March 1963 Telescope transmitted signals via the moon and Echo II, a NASA balloon satellite at 750km altitude, to the Zimenki Observatory in the USSR. Some (most?) of the signals were sent from the USA to the USSR via Jodrell Bank.[1]
1964 Telescope "discovers that OH emissions from star-forming regions and giant stars are the first celestial masers".[1]
February 1966 Tracked Luna 9, a Russian probe that soft-landed on the moon. Also received imagery of the moon's surface from the probe - releasing it before the Russians did (it had been broadcast using a standard newspaper picture transmission protocol, meaning that a machine borrowed from the Daily Express could be used to decode it).[1][1][1]
April 1966 Tracked Luna 10, a russian satellite put into orbit around the Moon.[1]
18 October 1967 Receives signals from / tracks Venera 4, a Russian probe to Venus.[1]
1968 Took part in the first transatlantic interferometer experiment; other telescopes were at Algonquin and Penticton in Canada.[1]
1968 Observed the coordinates of the recently-discovered pulsar, confirming its existence and investigating the dispersion measure.[1] Also used to make the first detection of polarization of the pulsar's radiation.[1] This marked the start of a substantial amount of work investigating pulsars at Jodrell, which is still ongoing.[1][1]
8 July 1968 Funding announced by the S.R.C. to upgrade and repair the telescope to the Mark IA.[1]
September 1968 Tracks Zond 5, a Russian probe that was launched at the moon, around which it sling-shotted before returning to Earth.[1]
September 1968
to February 1969 		Phase 1 of the Mark IA upgrade added an inner track.[1][1]
1969 First used in very long baseline interferometry with the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.[1]
July 1969 Tracked Luna 15. The 50ft telescope was used at the same time to track Apollo 11.[1][1]
September-November 1969 Phase 2 of the Mark IA upgrade relaid the railway track, which had been decaying and sinking over the previous years; added four bogies on the inner track and their steelwork, and overhauled the existing bogies on the outer track. Upthrust units for the inner bogies were ordered during Phase 2, but not fitted until 1970.[1][1]
14 August 1970 Mark I telescope put to the zenith for the final time; work on the refurbishment to Mark IA begins.[1]
August 1970
to November 1971 		Phase 3 of the Mark IA upgrade saw the addition of a new bowl surface in front of the old surface; fatigue cracks in the cones connecting the bowl to the towers were repaired; the central antenna was strengthened, and the central "bicycle wheel" support was added, as well as a new computer control system.[1][1]
1971 The Argus 100 computer previously used on the Mark II is used to replace the analogue control system on the Mark IA.[1]
1971 Lovell Telescope tracks the Mars 2 and Mars 3 space probes (amidst the upgrade of the telescope to the Mark IA)[1]
14 November 1971 Mark IA upgrade complete.[1]
1972-73 Telescope used for "a detailed survey of the radio sources in a limited area of the sky ... up to the sensitivity limit of the instrument". Among the objects catalogued was the first gravitational lens, which was confirmed optically in 1979.[1]
16 July 1974 Lovell Telescope was handed back to the University. Due to increases in the cost of steel during the upgrade, the final amount for the upgrade was £664,793.07.[1]
2 January 1976 High winds (>90mph) almost destroy telescope - literally within half an inch of collapsing. Two bracing girders were added to the towers to prevent something similar happening again.[1]
1980 First used in MERLIN
1986 Discovers first pulsar in a globular cluster.[1]
1987 Renamed to Lovell Telescope after 30 years of operation.[1] Telescope during resurfacing
1988 Becomes a Grade 1 listed building.[1]
~1992 (~15 years ago from 2007) Spontaneous high winds of over 100mph hit the telescope, lifting the whole of the telescope about 6 inches off the ground and blowing several panels out from the towers. Less than an hour before, the winds had been around 20mph.[1]
1993 Searches for Mars Observer.[1]
1998 Telescope discovers an object that later turns out to be the first Einstein ring to be detected.[1]
1998-end 2003 Telescope used as a follow-up instrument for possible SETI detections made at Aricibo.[1][1] No signals were detected.[1][1]
4 February 2000 Searches for Mars Polar Lander.[1][1][1]
2001/2 New surface put on telescope to replace the 1970s one, which was badly corroded.[1][1] Completed November 2002.[1] Officially reopened April 2003. Funded by the Wellcome Trust and PPARC.[1]
25-26 December 2003
January 2004 		Searches for Beagle II on Christmas Day 2004, without success[1][1] Search continues in later months with a specially-tuned receiver.[1] However, Beagle 2 was not detected.[1]
September 2006 The results of three years of observing a double pulsar with the Lovell telescope, as well as with Parkes and GBT, are announced - confirming that the general theory of relativity is accurate to 99.5%.[1]
2007 A (metal) tyre on one of the telescope's wheels cracks. A replacement was manufactured, and was installed on 4 May 2007, after ~ 2 months of downtime.[1][1] This was the first time this happened; two spares were ordered in case it happens again (which it is expected to in ~ 1 year).[1]
15-17 June 2007 Jodrell celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first movements of the telescope with a "First Move Literary Festival", which includes using the Lovell telescope to receive poems that have been bounced off the moon.[1]

Mark II

Also see the Wikipedia article "Mark II"

Built on site of the Transit Telescope. Used as part of MERLIN and VLBI. For technical information, see Lovell (1964).

42ft

Originally used for tracking space probes; was purchased by Jodrell along with the 7m.

7m

Undergraduate teaching

Merlin (also known as MTRLI)

Also see the Wikipedia article "MERLIN"
Consists of the Knockin, Darnhall, Tabley/Pickmeter telescopes, plus the Defford, Mark II and Lovell Telescope (above). Also used to have the Mark III.'

Defford

Used as part of MERLIN.

VLBI

Very Small Array

Located in Tenerife

Miscellaneous others


Historic telescopes

Old radar equipment

Observations in 1945 at Jodrell Bank
Observations in 1945 at Jodrell Bank

Searchlight receiver

Originally a searchlight used in WW2; a series of yagis were mounted on it and used for meteor astronomy.

Transit telescope

Also see the Wikipedia article "Transit Telescope"

218ft/66m wire paraboloid, focal point at the top of a tall pole that could be moved from side to side slightly - thus meaning that the telescope wasn't restricted to looking straight up. Size was determined by the position of Park Royal and the hedge of the field.[1] For details of its construction, see [1].

Polar Axis

50ft dish, polar axis mount. Was mainly used for lunar radar observations.

Mark III (Wardle)

Also see the Wikipedia article "Mark III (radio telescope)"

Was used as part of MERLIN. Less accurate version of the Mark II, but was transportable.

NB: the bogies used on the telescope were originally from railway trains; they ended up in a train museum after the telescope was scrapped.[1]

50ft

Replaced by the 42ft

Broadside array

25ft transportable telescope

25ft telescope

"originally built on top of the Shot Tower on the South Bank for the 1951 exhibition." Subsequently mounted on top of the power house.[1]

Miscellaneous others

Other notable events

References

    Books

    Journals

    Further reading

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