Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory
The Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory is located near Cambridge, UK and is home to a number of the largest and most advanced aperture synthesis radio telescopes in the world, including the One-Mile Telescope, 5-km Ryle Telescope, and the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager. It was founded by the University of Cambridge and is an institute of the Cambridge University Astronomy Department.History
Radio interferometry started in the mid-1940s on the outskirts of Cambridge, but with funding from the Science Research Council and a corporate donation of £100,000 from Mullard Limited, a leading commercial manufacturer of thermionic valves.
Construction of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory commenced at Lords Bridge, a few kilometres to the west of Cambridge.
The observatory was founded under Martin Ryle of the Radio-Astronomy Group of the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge and was opened by Sir Edward Victor Appleton on 25 July 1957. This group is now known as the Cavendish Astrophysics Group.Location
The site is located a few miles south-west of Cambridge University at Lords Bridge Station in Greater Cambridgeshire on a former ordnance storage facility, next to the now-unused Oxford-Cambridge Varsity railway line.
A portion of the track bed of the old line, running nearly East-West for several miles, was used to form the main part of the "5km" radio-telescope and the Cambridge Low Frequency Synthesis Telescope.Telescopes
Gallery
The following photographs were taken in June 2014:
