Jodrell Bank

Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope has come a long way from when in 1945 Bernard Lovell  (after his war time work on radar) was researching cosmic waves with an ex-military radar detector unit at the University of Manchester, with difficulty, because there was too much electric interference from the city's trams.  The Botany Department had an outpost at Jodrell Bank so he decamped out here and arrived at a muddy field on the Cheshire plain, expecting to be here for a couple of weeks, but eventually proceeding to build his telescope with used equipment left over from World War II.  He was told by the firms he contacted that what he was proposing was impossible but in 1949 found an ally in a bridge builder, Charles Husband, who said it was difficult but not impossible.

The whole telescope rotates on circular railway tracks, the bowl (which rather excitingly started to move while we were perambulating around it)

is supported on either side by two towers and can be tilted at any angle. The telescope became fully operational in 1957 just in time to follow the launch of the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, by the Russians.  The bowl is in the shape of a paraboloid and gathers the incoming radio waves from space.  If you can pick out the two small dishes in the gloom at either side of the base of the telescope in the first photograph

Whispering Dish

these are two miniature paraboloid dishes where one can whisper a message to a friend and discover why the shape is so important.   Today Jodrell Bank Telescope has been renamed in honour of Bernard Lovell (1913-2012) which even now, all these years later, is one of the biggest and most powerful radio telescopes in the world and has gone on from work on quasars and pulsars to things not even guessed about back then.  Apart from his contribution to radio astronomy (for which he was knighted in 1961) Lovell was a great communicator and that tradition continues with the  

Discovery Centre, here I am outside the Planet Pavilion which explains the wonders of the universe and the Jodrell Bank telescopes, not to mention interactive objects to while away a gloomy December day. Then to move outside to enjoy one of Bernard Lovell's other interests

trees (I think this one is a Whitebeam). He opened the Arboretum in 1972 and there is a large acreage to wander around containing the national collection of Sorbus and Malus

In 2011 they opened the Galaxy Garden designed by the gardener Chris Beardshaw which tells the story of the formation of the galaxy in seven key stages. The story in plants surrounds a mound inlaid with a chalk motif of the galaxy which can be seen on the gate notice above.  Wondering why I did not get up close and personal?

Inappropriate footwear in one of the wettest winters on record

Here is the Birth of the Planets, the grass is clumps of dust particles starting to gather together.  You will just have to imagine the flowering perennials representing the protoplanets clashing together.  We all agreed that a return in the Spring would be a more interesting time and also the apple trees would be in blossom

so enjoyed a few surprises, the trees and of course

the radio telescope.

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at J here

Looking Out

Alan has provided a wonderfully evocative photograph for this week's Sepia Saturday prompt which was taken on Mount Løvstakken in Norway.  Perhaps our trio are looking out for Henrik Ibsen to come walk into view. The photograph could certainly be a scene from one of his plays. I have a confession to make. I speed read and missed the musical trio reference because I read Röntgen, and thought German physicist.  Read Beyer and thought Friedrich one of the founders of the pharmaceutical giant. This indeed would have been a disparate trio to walk in the Norwegian mountains so no wonder my first thought was wow, who knew.  Well nobody did as I discovered when I reread the intro and it is the reason for my scientific take on the theme.  Having said that a telescope is definitely the star of the show but in this case a giant one.

The Westinghouse |Electrical and Manufacturing crew in South Philadelphia assemble in the rig that would later attach to the 200" mirror of the Palomar telescope.  Construction sites of companies all over the USA in the 1930s were all making different parts for the telescope.  Our story starts in 1928 when George Ellery Hale got a large Rockefeller grant to build an observatory and he started his search for an appropriate place to site it, having had to eliminate his original idea of the Los Angeles area due to light pollution.  That fact is rather appropriate because I found this photo on the Palomar Skies blog created by the then Public Affairs Coordinator who left Palomar to work for the International Dark Skies Association, he hoped that someone else would continue his Palomar blog.  Unfortunately it looks as nobody has but it remains a wonderful resource.

But lets get back to Hale who found his ideal position for the telescope in the early 1930s on the 5,600 feet of Palomar Mountain and proceeded to buy 160 acres from local ranchers and the US Forestry Service.  His next next problem was to get a 200" mirror. General Electric failed to make one out of fused quartz so that was $600,000 down the drain. He turned to Corning Glass who decide  Pyrex would be less prone to expand and contract than ordinary glass. At the second attempt they are successful. 

The project moves on in 1936 with construction of the dome

(Caltech Astronomy)

which also involves road building, cottages for personnel and camps for the workers. The next problem is to move the mirror blank across country and the crowds come out to watch the "Great Eye" travel by train in 1936 from New York to Pasadena.  The trip takes 16 days travelling at a speed of 25 mph and on arrival Caltech start to grind and polish the mirror, an immense task which is interrupted by World War 2 when production is stopped and the disk is stored and protected by timber for three years.  As Caltch explain "to make the final mirror, almost 10,000 pounds of glass are polished away, including the top two inches which contain "scar tissue" left over from the casting and annealing process". 

Now finished the mirror has to move from Pasadena to Palomar, enter the Belyea Truck Company, who were famous for driving a ship across a desert and saying there was no cargo they could not move.

In November 1947 the 40 ton cargo rested on 3 diesel tractors pushing it up the mountain.  The 25 mile trip is completed in 32 hours and engineers install the mirror but the image is not ideal so another two years are spent polishing and aligning and adjusting. In July 1948, although still not fully operational the telescope is dedicated and named after Hale who had died in 1938 his vision outliving him.  The story goes that in the last few days of his life Hale looked up into the sky and said  “It is a beautiful day. The sun is shining, and they are working on Palomar.”

Hale "The Journey to Palomar" University of Chicago

 Another famous name, Edwin Hubble took the first photograph with the "Big Eye" in January 1949 and the telescope became fully operational and remained the largest in the world until 1993.  Today it is still used for research and visitors are welcome to visit the public area or take a conducted tour.

Caltech's observatory on Palomar Mountain | Photo: Kevin L. Moore/Flickr/Creative Commons License