passing jodrell
telescope idle:
tilting at the metals

sensing an ozone of oratory
of gently mingling emphases
of sighs dispersing gently

the hanging of perfume in
a passenger’s slipstream
and the patinaed montage
of cutting and daydream

i was like:

hey,
let’s take this train to the stars
and just let them hear
what we have to say:

When I opened Google this morning it told me that today is the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s demonstration of his fancy new improved device for looking at faraway things – the telescope.**

I thought I should mark this in some way and I decided the best way to do so would be by talking about my favourite telescope, the Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank in Manchester.

This is the Lovell. It doesn’t look much like the instrument Galileo demonstrated but it works on exactly the same principle: light (in this case in the form of radio waves) is collected and focused to make an image of some distant astronomical source. It is the third largest steerable radio dish in the world at 76.2 metres in diameter and it has been operating since it was completed in 1957. It’s construction was masterminded by Sir Bernard Lovell, back in the days when astronomers would turn up in a muddy field with a big box of wires and build their own detectors (it’s nothing like that now!)

I’ve used this telescope. At that time this meant going to visit it at Jodrell Bank to collect the images. I loved this; the office I was put in was right next to it so I could stare at it all day (not good for productivity) and I would walk around it at lunchtimes. I think the reason this is my favourite is the shear scale of it. It towers over you and can be seen for miles around. The whole thing is just such an impressive feat of engineering.

I think I’ll finish with two more pictures. This is it stowed i.e. not observing (it’s the safest position for it to be in case of high wind).

And this, with the building in the foreground, gives a good idea of what’s it’s like to stand by it and see it loom over you.

Does anyone else have a favourite?

** As has been pointed out in the comments by someone a lot more knowledgeable than me about these things, I should make it clear that Galileo didn’t invent the telescope himself. Also, Google apparently got the date wrong – see the comments for the full timeline!

Interesting old news from Nature:

Robert Hanbury Brown, a giant from a golden period of innovation in astronomy, died on 16 January this year [2002], at the age of 85.

Hanbury, as he was always known, was born in India in 1916, the son of an army officer. Forsaking his schoolboy plans to become a classics scholar, he graduated in engineering from the University of London in 1935. He then worked on the secret development of the coastal radar — Chain Home — which was to prove vital in the 1940 Battle of Britain. By then, Hanbury was working with a group developing a shorter-wavelength radar that could be installed in aircraft. His splendid autobiography, Boffin (Adam Hilger, 1991), gives a vivid account of the trials and triumphs of this work, which by 1941 gave night fighters of the Royal Air Force the edge over the German bombers.
…
But all this was a prelude. Returning to Britain, Hanbury sought to pursue a higher degree in university research. His work having been secret, however, he had no publications. His enquiries brought him together with one of us (B.L.), who had returned to the University of Manchester with military radar equipment and built a 218-ft radio telescope at Jodrell Bank. Finding ways to minimize the background noise that bedevilled early efforts, Hanbury and his student Cyril Hazard showed that cosmic radio waves were emanating from the Andromeda spiral galaxy, 2 million light years away and far outside our own Galaxy — which, until then, had been thought to be the origin of all such emissions.

This discovery, using a fixed paraboloid dish, was the happy retort to those questioning the feasibility of the huge steerable radio telescope B.L. was then evangelizing for. Following years of struggle, this pioneering 250-ft, steerable dish was completed in 1957. Hanbury was among those to use it. In particular, he and Hazard played a significant part in the discovery of quasars — ‘quasi-stellar objects’, now taken to be the most distant, and so oldest, observable objects in the Universe.
…
Early on, Hanbury had also begun to think about a radio interferometer, which could measure the angular size of the sky’s two strongest radio sources, Cygnus A and Cassiopeia A. For all anyone knew, this might have required an interferometer baseline of a thousand kilometres or more. The technical difficulty lay in combining the radio signals, received at two widely separated points, with the required phase stability. Hanbury had the idea of measuring the correlation of the fluctuations in intensity, a process that does not require the phase information needed in approaches based on detecting signal amplitudes. This deceptively simple solution raises profound questions, and Hanbury collaborated with the theoretical physicist Richard Twiss to put it all on a sound basis. Surprisingly quickly, by 1952 the intensity interferometer was built, and had shown the radio sources to be so extended that baselines of only a few kilometres were needed (so that earlier methods would have been adequate). In Hanbury’s words, he had built a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

The obituary was written by Bernard Lovell and Robert M. May. It is interesting to see, over and over again, how profoundly the World War II changed the science of physics; much as World War I transformed chemistry.

my grandparents lived in a wattle and daub tenant farmhouse and worked long hours on their 26 acres. i visited for a week or two every summer to help with the haymaking, and to plant spuds, and to play cricket with my grandpa – a mean spin bowler who never tired of fetching the tennis balls i thwacked across the farmyard, and to fish for roach and perch in his little pond with a cane, a long piece of tatty nylon, a chicken-feather float, worms freshly dug from the midden and a barbed hook from a tackle shop in warrington.

every summer, as a treat, i’d get one of two trips – a car ride to manchester airport, to watch the planes taking off, or to jodrell bank, to play with a little dish that visitors could point at the sun. i loved both. i loved anything and everything during those endless summers: my bedroom was lined with every single book enid blyton had ever written, my mattress was the biggest and softest ever created, my muscles were growing and aching from throwing bales of hay, and my nan loved me with the kind of passion some farmers still reserve for their eldest grandson.

despite the trips to jodrell, i hadn’t the first clue about astronomy. i wasn’t interested in stars. i was obsessed with tigers and golden eagles and mankind’s rape of Earth. my grandparents didn’t explain what jodrell was all about, never mentioned sputnik, or lovell. they’d heard of computers, and pushed me in that direction. i assumed the mark 1a was a big tv aerial.

then i was put onto an astronomy course at college. there was no space left on the computing module i’d chosen. i didn’t choose astronomy; astronomy chose me. the first lecture was by ian robson. he worked himself into a frenzy, pontificating about quasars. he showed us slides from his trips to UKIRT, telling us we could be there in a year or two if we worked hard. i never looked back. add a dose each of andy adamson and doug whittet and you are going to become a very passionate astronomer. or should that be `very passionate about astronomy’? either way, i did.

next step: choosing a PhD supervisor. i wasn’t confident of achieving the necessary degree, but i visited Manchester, nevertheless, and did quite well in the interview. they never even bothered with a rejection letter. you don’t forget that kind of thing.

i visited UMIST next, was offered a place and was ecstatic. then i recall being asked by doug whittet and ian robson whether i would work with them. i’d done research projects with both and knew even at that tender age that it would be hard to find two more different animals. i admired both, for very different reasons, and was over the moon that they were interested in guiding me forward. in the end, it was an easy choice – an £8k/yr deal involving an enjoyable amount of tutoring versus a £3k/yr SERC studentship involving perpetual penury.

i was offered a couple of projects and i chose on the basis of a fantastic interview wherein patrick moore quizzed david allen about symbiotic binaries on the sky at night, then doug left for NY. that was a blow, but i fell on my feet, being handed to mike bode, a charismatic leader and a relative newcomer in the department.

the students and postdocs shared an office and the department shared a starlink room, with its ARGS display unit and microVAX mainframe. i was surrounded by talented and dedicated astronomers, 7 days and nights a week – derek ward-thompson, david hughes, tim o’brien, jim dunlop – all in their 20s – the best role models a lad could have. the hours were ridiculous, as were the out-of-hours.

there aren’t many people, alive or dead, i’d swap places with. it was years before i realised how many folk dread their week at work. i spent years waiting for a reckoning – for a bus to splat me across the road, tom and jerry stylie, but i now realise that life has had its revenge via the realisation that my children may not be so lucky. ever the optimist, eh?

Armed with a one of those snappy little pencils with an eternal rod of led that you click on demand, I drew these horses in the back of a car.We travelled up to Manchester over the weekend and listened to Lemon Jelly and it all got a bit hypnotic on the way home. Perpetually fascinated by the human relationship with nature, what started of as ‘horse’ became ‘man’. Uninterrupted, undistracted. Jodrell Bank sat like an ugly beautiful thing pointed at the heavens and then the heavens opened up and thundered on the car roof. I went really far away with my pencil and then returned again after completing another drawing of a mermaid come manga character. Motoring sweets at hand, all covered in sweet white dust, it was really quite something. Start new bird panels soon.

By ‘me’ I’m referring to Sir Bernard Lovell, rather than me myself – I’ve never, as far as I’m aware, been the target of a Russian hit. I once had a very close call with a St Petersburg taxi driver, though. . . .

Back to Sir Bernard. The renowned British scientist, who developed the Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope, said in a BBC interview that during a trip to the Soviet union in 1963 the Russians tried to kill him with radiation. Professor Lovell wrote a detailed account of the incident, which won’t, unfortunately, be released into the public domain until after his death. He believes the Soviets bombarded him with lethal radiation from a radio telescope he was visiting on the Black Sea.

Although ill for a month on his return to Blighty he nonetheless survived (obviously). Many of his fellow scientists who went to the USSR in the early 1960s weren’t so lucky. Some never came back at all, others did but died shortly afterwards. Now, I’m all for wishing Sir Bernard a long life and all that, but, well, you know, I’m kinda dying to know what’s in that there detailed account he wrote. . . .

They went to the Gnome Reserve last weekend whilst I stayed at home mucking about with my website, long overdue for an overhaul.

I wish I had gone.  Apparently it is the only one in the world, here right on our doorstep in North Devon! Upon entry, you get given a badge and a gnome hat, and a clipboard and pencil for noting down the number of fairies you see in the woods.

Sorting out the website was a tedious job, and of course I got distracted …

The first thing I looked at was Creative Museums , a fascinating site, where you can browse the collections of nine national museums and galleries. It works a little bit like Facebook : you can leave comments, start groups, and build and share personal collections with others. I spent a happy time drifting around the V & A and the Tate – then I discovered School Tube and their video: ‘Environmental Art Around Google Earth’. How could I resist that!

I had to download the latest version of Google Earth, but couldn’t manage it, so downloaded the previous one, and looked around not only at all the places I have been, but all the places I am planning to visit in the next year or so.

‘The internet is wonderful’, I thought, ‘You can explore the whole world without ever leaving your seat. In fact you can explore the entire known universe…’ I remembered it was the Year of Astronomy and clicked over to spend some time on the Jodrell Bank site and its amazing images. ‘Not only that, but you can communicate with vast numbers of people all over the world!’ So I had a look to see who was around on my social networking sites, and made a comment or two.

Before long I found myself lost in a maze of links and sites – fascinating stuff, but I had completely forgotten how I got there, and what I was supposed to be doing in the first place. I began to get an uneasy feeling (which I ignored) that there was something not quite right about spending one’s life mediated by a screen – especially for someone who is supposed to be interested in the earth.

I had been excited to find so much interesting information on a Sunday afternoon, yet somehow everything had now become flat, homogenised, and mildly dissatisfying, and I couldn’t really take any of it in. What had started out as curiosity had gradually turned into a sense of irritation and general angst. 

But I couldn’t tear myself away. And even though my eyes were growing blurry and my neck stiff and painful, I kept on searching for some other bit of fascinating information in the hope it would make me feel a bit better – but it didn’t, and the best I could find were some over-sugared Earth and Spirit sites.

After that, as a sort of antidote, I dived into the great looming environmental disasters: awful stuff about melting glaciers, dying bees, rising sea levels, you name it… It stirred my resolve to do something about it, but not for very long. By now I felt far too depressed.

‘Where will it all end?’ I asked myself, ‘Over the years, I have consumed so many horror stories of environmental catastrophe, and listened to so many apparently well-meaning people exhorting me to ‘do my bit’, that I really can’t decide whether I am scared witless or bored out of my skull.’

At that point my husband came in, beaming all over his face and proudly displaying his Gnome badge. I only wish I had gone with them. 

Today I installed “Skystones”  at Tapeley Park, Devon. Tapeley Park looks set to be England’s first fully sustainable stately home, and there are wonderful plans afoot relating to food production and low cost sustainable housing – as well as becoming a centre for scientists and inventors to come together in order to address pressing social and environmental needs.

 Later on, I found this stunning artist’s impression of our Milky Way on the Jodrell Bank website - along with what to look for in the night sky during May. This year, 2009 is the Year of Astronomy.

[1] UFO Hoax was a social experiment; Strange lights appeared over Morris County, New Jersey, on January 5th of this year; The lights moved silently and slowly, and then disappeared one by one…

[2] Alien Abduction: Looking Back at America’s First Case; Today, due to television shows and films, the scenario is familiar: UFOs chase down terrified witnesses on a desolate road and take them into the spaceship to ask them questions and probe them in awkward places…

[3] Scientist Stephen Hawking Ill in Hospital; Leading scientist Stephen Hawking’s condition has “improved” after being admitted to the hospital with chest problems, Cambridge University says…

[4] Switch-on success for superscope; The first stage of the switch-on of one of the world’s most powerful stargazing systems has got underway…

[5] Rocky clues from dirty dead stars; A survey of dead stars has shown that many are probably surrounded by the rocky remains of asteroids and planets…

jodrell bank, originally uploaded by richardbaybutt.

Team GB going past LovellTelescope

I love elections. This year in London we’ve seen Boris versus Ken, while in the US it’s going to be McCain versus Obama in November. But there’s another poll, happening right now, that you can all take part in – it’s called the Big Science Read.

The Big Science Read was launched at Jodrell Bank, the giant radio telescope that actually features in the second Johnny Mackintosh book. Despite being a feature of the Cheshire landscape for over fifty year, the Lovell Telescope is still the world’s third-largest fully steerable telescope in the world.

The people behind the contest have helpfully divided suggested books into fact or fiction categories. Perhaps because they couldn’t decide whether or not Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London is based on a true story, they’ve left it off their list but you can still vote for it.

I believe it’s important that everyone has some understanding of science, how it works and how to evaluate the reports we see in the media. Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column in the Saturday Guardian is something everyone should read. With Johnny Mackintosh, I thought it important to infuse the story with as much genuine science as possible, sitting quietly in the background, although never at the expense of the actual story-telling.

My aim was that the book would play a role in inspiring younger readers to discover more about the world (and indeed the universe) around them. I hope the use of science in fiction has worked. If you think it might have done, vote now.

Jodrell bank, in the North West (Cheshire, UK) is being faced with closure …..In the Times online (posted 6th march,2008) “World leading telescopes face being shut down to save £2.5m“ .

It mentions “Merlin’s strength comes from having seven telescope dishes, including the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank, linked to receive signals from space simultaneously. Because they operate in tandem up to 135 miles apart they offer unrivalled detail on distant gallaxies” (extract from article). 

This is a disgrace, and i urge you to sign the 10 downing street petition (closing date september 6th,2008). see here . Last time i looked here, there were over 3000 signatures.

There is also an interesting article by the telegraph.co.uk (posted 7th march,2008) “UK astronomers to broadcast adverts to aliens“.

It says “The cosmic stunt marks a small step for man, a giant leap for advertising hype and underlines the desperation of British astronomers to find new sources of funding as they struggle to cope with swingeing cuts that now threaten institutions such as Jodrell Bank, the world famous observatory in Cheshire” (extract from article).

And “Alongside the risks to these and other projects is a 25 per cent cut in the STFC research grants to universities that will see numbers of postdoctoral researchers in space science and astronomy fall to their lowest level for seven years” (extract from article).

In a short-sighted move by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the iconic British radio telescope faces closure.

Read about it here.

Eight million pounds has already been spent on linking up seven radio telescopes to form the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN). Jodrell Bank was to be the hub of this powerful network and its staff have been concentrating their efforts on that.

This network would cost £2.5million p.a. to run and as part of the effort to balance its books, the STFC has decided not to fund these running costs. As a result, Jodrell Bank – perhaps the most famous radio telescope in the world – faces the end of its life as a working observatory.

You might find it hard to believe that the world’s fourth largest economy cannot find the money but there are lots of demands on the public purse. Two and a half million pounds can pay for:-

One eighth of the cost of building a Creationist Vardy Academy

OR

one year’s grants and subsidies to Karl Battenburg

OR

one year’s expenses claimed by Cabinet Ministers

OR

illegally occupying Iraq for one day.

Whispers have been circulating about the possible closure of Jodrell Bank, as another fall out from the STFC funding shortfall announced last year. Professor Sir Bernard Lovell, who founded the facility, was interviewed in The Times today, condemning the cut backs, and outlining the threat to the viability of the e-Merlin project.

Science and research facilities, and universities in the UK have been fighting against this shortfall, since it first appeared. Paul Crowther, from Sheffield University, has a page documenting the entire history and development of the issue here.

Curiosity led me to dredging through Hansard this morning, because I was sure that I remember a speech from Gordon Brown (pre the big promotion), outlining his intention to increase scientific spending, and it’s key importance to the UK economy. Sure enough, in last years budget speech:

“My view is that, in all the advanced industrial economies, public and private investment in the great new drivers of growth—innovation and education—will need to rise towards 10 per cent. of national income. As part of our plan to double investment in science, I can announce that in the next four years public investment in science will rise from £5 billion this year to £6.3 billion by 2010—a 25 per cent. cash increase in the science budget of our country.”

So why are university labs, and facilities like Jodrell Bank having to fight for their future? At the centre of all this, there seems to be a standoff between government, and the STFC. For whatever reason, the shortfall was not spotted in the original factoring. But rather than acknowledge the mistake, government are using this as a stick to beat the STFC. In response, the STFC have to start making cuts, but perhaps decided that by putting a high profile facility on the firing line, it will garner more public support. The issue certainly has been understated in the press, which tends to keep politicians off the hook.

In any event, there shouldn’t be a shortfall, and science facilities shouldn’t be under threat. The government can’t be claiming poverty, when they are about to spend £5.4bn on paranoia? (or is it now £4.4bn?) 2% of that could plug the STFC shortfall, and there’d still be 98% of it left over to plunge into other issues.

While I won’t have to face losing a job because of the funding crisis, I am however studying again as a mature undergraduate in physics. I’ll probably never get to the dizzy heights of research, where a move like this has a direct impact on my daily life, but even I can recognise that by withdrawing support for scientific growth eventually the access to education and the quality of the material degrades. That will then filter down to A levels, GCSE, and on. What’s the point in driving people to education, and encouraging young people into science, if at the end of it all, there is nothing for them to get their teeth into?

Finally on Hansard, I found another instance of Gordon talking about the importance of science and education, this time from December 06.

“Let me summarise: Asia is already out-producing Europe. China alone is manufacturing half the world’s computers, half the worlds clothes, and more than half the world’s digital electronics and, this Christmas, more than 75 per cent. of children’s toys. But in the next10 years, the competitive challenge is even more profound. Once responsible for just one eighth of the world’s growth, China and India will soon capture almost half. And increasingly they are competing not just on low cost, but on high skills. Every year, Britain adds 75,000 engineers and computer scientists, while India and China add half a million. Annually, Britain turns out a quarter of a million graduates; India and China 4 million. Economies like ours have no choice but to out-innovate and out-perform competitors by the excellence of our science and education, the quality of infrastructure and environment, the flexibility of our economy, and our levels of creativity and entrepreneurship.”

You see, I would vote for that. I won’t vote for this.

P.S. For all that they are worth, there is a petition, and I urge you to take five minutes to sign it:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/jodrellfunding/

Jodrell Bank – under threat

British astronomy is set to suffer as its seven giant astronomy dishes are to be axed in order to save £2.5million each year.

Scientists reacted with dismay to the news, saying that Britain’s leading role in radio astronomy will be destroyed.

Jodrell Bank faces closure as an observatory as there are proposals to end the public funding for e-Merlin, which is a project linking the seven radiotelescopes. The British network has been responsible for some of the most important discoveries from the past fifty years, ranging from the tracking of the Sputnik rockets back in the 1950s, to the most accurate proof to date of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Almost £8million has been spent so far on improving the links between the dishes in the upgrade which was intended to make the telescopes 30 times more powerful.

Whilst the government is loath to spend £2.5million on preserving our scientific expertise, here are some examples of things the government will happily throw money away on – compensating prisoners for claims of abuse, unlawful detention, assault and medical negligence during 2007; expenses claims by cabinet ministers during 2007. We do not mention the council tax rebates for members of the Armed Forces serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, as we consider them more deserving of taxpayers’ money than criminals or government ministers!

More here.