Qualla: Lovell Telescope

Lovell Telescope: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Peel; Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the bill landed for the Mark I telescope at Jodrell Bank, it ran to 700,000 pounds against a budget less than half that, and the press, the Public Accounts Committee and a Treasury auditor were already circling Bernard Lovell. Then, on 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. On the night of 12 October Lovell pointed his still-unfinished instrument at a patch of empty sky over Russia, and just before midnight he locked onto the booster rocket that had carried the satellite into orbit. The Mark I dish was suddenly the only telescope in the world able to track an object that nobody else could find. The debt, more or less, paid itself off in a week.

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Image: Mike Peel; Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lovell Telescope: Battleships and Bearings

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ydam, CC BY 2.5. Lovell met the civil engineer Charles Husband on 8 September 1949, and over the next two years they sketched their way toward a fully steerable dish that no one had ever tried to build. The first major component arrived in 1950, second-hand. Two circular fifteen-inch turret-drive...

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Image: Ydam | CC BY 2.5

Lovell Telescope: First Light, Then Sputnik

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anthony Appleyard (talk), Public domain. The telescope moved for the first time on 3 February 1957, by an inch. It tilted under its own power on 20 June. First light arrived on 2 August 1957, with a drift scan across the Milky Way at 160 megahertz. The bowl was 76.2 metres across, 3,200 tonnes in total mass, with a bowl...

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Image: Anthony Appleyard (talk) | Public domain

Lovell Telescope: The Crisis of 1967

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Peel; Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the mid-1960s the telescope was tired. It had been designed for a ten-year working life, and Husband had been warning about decay since 1963. In September 1967 fatigue cracks were found in the elevation drive system; left alone, the cracks could have jammed the dish or worse. ...

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Image: Mike Peel; Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lovell Telescope: What the Dish Still Does

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Peel; Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester., CC BY-SA 4.0. The Lovell Telescope is no longer the largest steerable radio telescope in the world. The Green Bank dish in West Virginia and the Effelsberg dish in Germany are now bigger. But it remains an extraordinarily productive instrument. Of the original 64 wheels supporting the structur...

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Image: Mike Peel; Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester. | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lovell Telescope: An Unsung Landmark

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike in Macc, CC BY-SA 3.0. In September 2006 the telescope won the BBC's online competition for the UK's greatest unsung landmark. Both Lovell and Husband were knighted for their roles in building it, and the dish was designated Grade I listed in July 1988 and the centerpiece of a UNESCO World Heritage ins...

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Image: Mike in Macc | CC BY-SA 3.0