The Lovell Telescope presents a new face to the Universe

After many months of unseen work, the University of Manchester’s giant
Lovell Telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire is again
scanning the skies with a brand new, pristine white, surface. After two
summers of work, the installation and painting of the new galvanised steel
surface has been completed so that the telescope now presents a new face to
the world. This is a major milestone in a 32.5 million upgrade programme
funded by a grant from the Government and the Wellcome Foundation.

With a much more accurate pointing system, installed as part of the upgrade,
the telescope is now performing better than at any time in its 45-year life.

Professor Andrew Lyne, Director of Jodrell Bank said that “he was delighted
to have our flagship instrument back in use and looked forwards to the
rejuvenated telescope keeping the observatory at the forefront of
astronomical research for many years to come.” Next summer will bring the
final phase of the upgrade in which each of the 340 panels that make up the
76m diameter surface will be adjusted to make the whole surface follow the
optimum parabolic shape to an accuracy of between 1 and 2 millimetres. When
this final task is completed, the telescope will have its frequency range
quadrupled so allowing a wide range of new science to be carried out.

Sir Bernard Lovell, first Director of the Observatory and instrumental in
the building of the telescope, watched as the new surface was revealed. Sir
Bernard said that “he had never expected the telescope to have an
operational life of more that 15 years and was immensely pleased to see it
still in use. It is truly magnificent.” The new Lovell Telescope will be
used to discover new distant pulsars, study the formation of stars in our
own galaxy and seek out faint radio galaxies and quasars in the far reaches
of the Universe.

In addition to its use as a single telescope, the Lovell Telescope is a key
element of the UK’s MERLIN high-resolution radio-imaging National Facility.
The upgrade will more than double the sensitivity of MERLIN and open up
exciting new areas of astrophysical study producing images whose detail
exceeds that of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The Lovell telescope is
also regularly linked to telescopes in Europe and around the globe to make
observations with the highest resolution in all astronomy. The upgraded
telescope will also be able to play a significant role in the future
expansion of these activities into space. However, as in the past, the most
important and exciting discoveries by the telescope will be those which are
totally unpredictable.

High resolution images of the new 76-m Lovell Telescope can be found at: www.jb.man.ac.uk/news/newface/

Background Information:

The University of Manchester’s giant 76-metre (250ft) Lovell radio telescope
at Jodrell Bank is probably the most famous working scientific instrument in
the land and is widely regarded by the public as an icon of the very best
achievements of British science and technology. For over 45 years, the
telescope, still the third largest fully-steerable radio telescope in the
world, has played a major role in astronomical research due to its large
collecting area and great flexibility. Equipped with state-of-the-art
receiver systems, the telescope is now 30 times more sensitive than when it
was first built. In recent years it has played a leading role in many fields
of astronomy, including the detection and study of a new population of
pulsars and the discovery of the first gravitational lens. It is also
currently participating in the most sensitive search ever for signals from
extra-terrestrial intelligence.

The Joint Infrastructure Fund (JIF) is a 3750 million [pounds Sterling]
partnership for the
improvement of University research infrastructure between the Wellcome
Trust, the Office of Science and Technology and the Higher Education Funding
Council for England. Details can be found on the Wellcome Trust website at: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/1/biosfgjif.html

The grant has been administered by the Particle Physics and Astronomy
Research Council (PPARC) website at: http:/www.pparc.ac.uk

The upgrade package has four main elements, the first three of which are now
compete:

1) New reflecting surface

The present surface panels have been replaced by new galvanised steel
plates. Attachment is with self tapping screws to avoid the distortions
induced in the original surface by spot welding. This work has been
undertaken by SHAL Engineering of Chesterfield.

2) New pointing control system:

The present drive and control system has been replaced by state-of-the-art
technology to increase the precision of the positional control. This
provides independent control of all the individual drive motors and enables
the telescope to follow a radio source to an accuracy of 10 arc seconds,
corresponding to one 200th of the diameter of the Moon.

3) Refurbishment of the track and foundations:

Remedial work has been carried out on the surface layer of the concrete
foundations and the outer azimuthal track, laid when the telescope was first
built, has been renewed.

4) Surface adjustment scheduled for Spring 2003.

Using modern electronic surveying followed by holographic profiling
techniques, the new surface will be precisely measured and then set to the
optimum parabolic shape to an accuracy of between 1 and 2 mm. This is about
4 times more accurate than the original surface and allows the operational
wavelength range of the telescope to be increased by a similar amount.

An illustrated overview of the work of the Jodrell Bank Observatory can be
seen on the World-Wide-Web at: http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/booklet/

MERLIN (Multi Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network) is one of the
most powerful radio telescopes in the world. It is operated by the
University of Manchester on behalf of the Particle Physics and Astronomy
Research Council (PPARC) and is the radio astronomy cornerstone of the
United Kingdom’s astronomy programme. MERLIN is a sensitive network of 7
telescopes distributed over central England; several at and near Jodrell
Bank in Cheshire, one at Knockin near the Welsh border, one at Defford in
Worcestershire and the most distant located just outside Cambridge. MERLIN
produces radio images with the same level of detail as that achieved
optically with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. More information can be found
at: http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/merlin

The radio telescopes of MERLIN often participate in joint observations with
other large telescopes in Europe and across the world. Using a technique
known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), in which the signals from
each telescope are recorded on large magnetic tapes and then replayed later
on special purpose data processors, astronomers can synthesize a telescope
with a diameter of up to 12,000 km. This allows them to produce radio images
hundreds of times more detailed than the Hubble Space Telescope produces
using visible light. More details on the European VLBI Network (EVN) can be
found at: http://www.jive.nl/jive/evn