Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory

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Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (MRAO) is home to a number of large aperture synthesis radio telescopes, including the One-Mile Telescope, 5km Ryle Telescope, and the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager. Radio interferometry started in the mid 1940s on the outskirts of Cambridge, but with funding from the Science Research Council and a donation of £100,000 from Mullard Limited, construction of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory commenced at Lord's 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. This group is now known as the Cavendish Astrophysics Group.

The site is located at Lord's Bridge, Cambridgeshire on a former ordnance storage facility, next to the now-abandoned Cambridge-Bedford 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.

[edit] Telescopes

Telescope	Year built	Status
Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Small Array	2004	24 hour operation
Very Small Array (moved to Tenerife in 1999)	1998	24 hour operation
Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope made first high-resolution maps of Cosmic Microwave Background fluctuations	1995	Decommissioned
Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST) first aperture synthesis at optical wavelengths	1993	Operated on clear nights
One receiver from the MERLIN array	1990	24 hour operation
Cambridge Low Frequency Synthesis Telescope (CLFST)	1980	24 hour operation
Ryle Telescope (formerly 5 Kilometre Telescope, also known as the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Large Array)	1971	Decommissioned
Half-Mile Telescope	1968	Decommissioned
Interplanetary Scintillation Array discovered first pulsar	1967	Essentially retired
One-Mile Telescope	1964	Decommissioned except for one dish used by undergraduates and amateur astronomers
4C Array, first telescope at the Cambridge's new observatory, made the 4C catalogue	1958	Decommissioned

[edit] External links

• The Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory webpage
• Image from Google maps showing the One-Mile, Half Mile, 4C Array, MERLIN, COAST, CAT and Ryle telescopes.

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