The Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank

The huge radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire dominates the flat landscape for miles around. Jodrell Bank was originally a botanical research centre run by the University of Manchester, but in 1945 Bernard Lovell, a research scientist, took some ex-army radar system down to the garden sheds at Jodrell Bank to search for cosmic rays. He'd already tried this in the University itself, but the overhead electric cables from the city's tram network were causing too much interferance.

Lovell's team had some successes finding meteor showers but to detect anything from further afield would require bigger, more sentitive equipment. By 1947, his team had built a wire mesh reflecting aerial 218ft in diameter, easily the largest in the world at the time. The aerial made some important astronomical discoveries but its construction limited the area of sky it could cover.

By 1951, a project was under way to build an even bigger and fully-steerable radio telescope, funding was secured and designs created. But during construction, costs escalated dramatically leaving the University faced with a huge debt.

In 1957, the new telescope was still not fully functional, but events were happening elsewhere that would prove the telescope's lifeline. When the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 on October 4th, the telescope at Jodrell Bank successfully tracked the satellite flashing across the sky at a speed of 5 miles a second and was the only instrument in the world capable of doing so. The subsequent publicity for the telescope helped to generate additional funding and its future and ongoing development was secured.

Today, the Lovell telescope, as it is now named, has been modified several times and is a key instrument in British and European space research. It is the core of the UK's MERLIN project, in which several other radio telescopes aroud the country are linked together to create a super-telescope in a technique called 'interferometry', and is a part of a similar European-wide network called VLBI.

When we arrived, the telescope was directed at an angle which would make for some interesting photos, however after popping in the cafe for a coffee, we returned to find it pointing straight up to the sky, meaning the inside of the dish couldn't be seen. After a while it became clear it wasn't going to move again any time soon as some workmen were lifted onto the huge steel framework and set to work painting. Such is life!

The visitor centre is worth a look, and there's also a trail to follow through the adjacent arboretum, where representations of each of the planets can be searched for. The discs representing the planets are each to scale based on the telescope itself representing the sun, and each are spaced out proportionately through the grounds on a much smaller scale. Nevertheless the outermost planets Pluto and Eris (or, more technically dwarf planets as they are officially classified these days) are quite a walk away and take some finding!