Dear Blogger,
ShACC RUN TO JODRELL BANK - Thursday 18th May
After our trip last year was bedevilled by waiting for the new First Light Pavillion to be opened, not to mention multiple closed roads along the route to Jodrell Bank, Kevin & Karen have finally been able to plan our run, which is a must for anyone with a technical `bent`.
Please contact me asap if you would like to join this run to somewhere truly special, members of any club are more than welcome to join us.
The Run will start at Whittington Castle, you can support this special north Shropshire attraction by paying £2 for parking.
Bring a picnic to enjoy in the arboreatum of have lunch at First Light cafe.
Entrance is £12 for adults, £10 for us Oldies and it might be worth bookiing on line to save queuing https://www.jodrellbank.net/booking/
I plan to send the route out tomorrow,
Yoland
New
First Light at Jodrell Bank
The story of Jodrell Bank began in 1945 when Bernard Lovell came to The University of Manchester to observe cosmic rays. A quiet observing site was required and the University's botanical station at a little known place called Jodrell Bank, 20 miles south of Manchester, was the ideal location.
Accidental Beginnings
On a freezing cold day in December 1945 a physicist from The University of Manchester, called Bernard Lovell, drove a trailer out to a remote field in Cheshire. He wanted to see whether radar, which he had learnt about during the Second World War, could be used to study cosmic rays (high energy particles in Earth's atmosphere).
Radar experiments outside his laboratory in Manchester had been unsuccessful because of interference from the city's electric trams. But fortunately the University's botany department owned some land in the Cheshire countryside. This remote location was ideal and Lovell set up his radar kit outside the gardeners' hut. His results were good, but it wasn't cosmic rays he had found, but meteors. This accidental discovery was the start of radio astronomy at Jodrell Bank.
Over the next five years, a team of scientists and technicians joined Lovell at what became known as the Jodrell Bank Experimental Station. They were building a new science: radio astronomy, studying the radio waves from space to learn about the Universe. They built their own equipment, largely from army surplus. In 1946 they built the 'Searchlight Aerial', mounted on top of a rotating searchlight base and used for studying meteors. In 1947 they built the 'Transit Telescope', a 218ft diameter wire mesh dish, and used it to detect radio waves from the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away.
Construction of the largest radio telescope earthstarted in 1952, but there were many setbacks until October 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. This was the start of the Space Race and the eyes of the world turned to the sky. It became apparent that the near-complete telescope at Jodrell Bank was the only instrument in the world capable of locating and tracking the carrier rocket that had launched Sputnik – an intercontinental ballistic missile. Overnight the fortunes of the telescope changed.
https://www.jodrellbank.net/explore/heritage/the-story-of-jodrell-bank/
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Yoland
