Jodrell Bank chosen as base for largest radio telescope

[mylatestwhim]

Seems like exciting news especially as it is just down the road from me.

£1.3 billion project can only be good for the area and very exciting for Astronomy.

BBC News - Jodrell Bank chosen as base for largest radio telescope

The total collecting area will be approximately one square kilometre giving 50 times the sensitivity, and 10,000 times the survey speed, of the best current-day telescopes, the SKA project said in a statement.

[nightfisher]

great news

[Capricorn]

But the scopes will be either in South Africa or Australia.

All the GB gets is the building from which it is supposiudly run. Still bet most of the work and action will be at the actual site of the scopes.

[mylatestwhim]

But the scopes will be either in South Africa or Australia.

All the GB gets is the building from which it is supposiudly run. Still bet most of the work and action will be at the actual site of the scopes.

Agreed, it's a shame the installation will be elsewhere but I suppose clear weather would allow the best results and that aint cheshire unfortunately

[tibbs1972]

Great news for UK science.

Not sure why we need to worry about cloud cover here. From what I've read, radio astronomy is not affected by cloud cover and rain.

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this issue.

Anyway, nice to know the UK is keeping its foot in the science door.

[calibos]

I'd imagine its not clouds of water vapour they want to keep the scope away from but clouds of mobile phone, Satellite TV and microwave oven waves they want to keep them away from Just like optical telescopes the best place for it is probably the middle of nowhere, just a different type of middle of nowhere to optical telescope observatories.

[mylatestwhim]

I'd imagine its not clouds of water vapour they want to keep the scope away from but clouds of mobile phone, Satellite TV and microwave oven waves they want to keep them away from Just like optical telescopes the best place for it is probably the middle of nowhere, just a different type of middle of nowhere to optical telescope observatories.

Ah yes - the 'Cheshire Set' marauding, upwardly mobile, capitalist hordes of blue tooth equipped, WI FI enabled, Range Rover sport driving estate agents/ property developers and yummy mummies/ spoilt, aviator wearing rich kids that grace our fine county.

I'm sure our airspace will be engorged with a veritable Heinz spaghetti of nonsense from said individuals, needless to say a super telescope would be rendered useless after penetrating the network of bs that is created from this regoin.

Sorry for the mini rant but I agree with the above comment 100%.

[Adrian]

I thought this was great news... Then I noticed in the 'related stories' section towards the bottom, a story from October 2007

BBC NEWS | England | Manchester | Largest telescope plans unveiled

The news is actually that a document has been signed, not the choice of Jodrell Bank which was made 3 1/2 years ago. That's journalism

[FraserClarke]

I thought this was great news... Then I noticed in the 'related stories' section towards the bottom, a story from October 2007

BBC NEWS | England | Manchester | Largest telescope plans unveiled

The news is actually that a document has been signed, not the choice of Jodrell Bank which was made 3 1/2 years ago. That's journalism

Not quite. That story from 2007 was about an earlier design phase of the project, and I think (??) was only the UK/European part.

This decision (made last week) was about the site which will coordinate the building and running of the SKA -- a much bigger deal.

There was no guarantee that Jodrell Bank (or the UK indeed) would get to have this coordinating facility, so it is really quite big news. Yes, the telescopes will be in Africa or Australia/NZ, but having a coordinating facility is a big deal -- it's where the science is centred around, which is kind of the whole point of the project