The History
The Mullard observatory is a pretty cool site hosting a shit load of interesting stuff. I first visited the site back in 2015 and climbed the cluster of dishes positioned out on their own.
The report can be found here.
Report - - Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory – Cambridge – December 2015 | Other Sites
The history The Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory(MRAO) is home to a number of large aperture synthesis radio telescopes, including the One-Mile Telescope, 5-km Ryle Telescope, and the Arcminute Micro kelvin Imager. Radio interferometry started in the mid-1940s on the outskirts of Cambridge...
I had always planned a revisit but other stuff just got in the way, well last month myself and RA decided to venture over and have a look at the rest of the site.
But what really caught our attention was the 4C Array radio telescope.
The 4C Array is a cylindrical paraboloid radio telescope located at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, near Cambridge, England. It is similar in design to the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope. It is 450 m long, 20 m wide, with a second, moveable element, now mostly removed some of it is still visible. It was the first large aperture synthesis telescope built in 1958, it was also the first new instrument to be built at Lord's Bridge, after the Observatory was moved there in 1957, and needed 64 km (40 mi) of reflector wire. The 4C operated at 178 MHz (1.7 m), and located nearly 5000 sources of the 4C (4th Cambridge) catalogue published in 1965 and 1966, which helped establish the evolution of the radio galaxy population of the universe. The telescope is now inoperable.
The Explore
So we knew these guys were already there
After having a nose at the site on google earth we noticed what looked like a baby version of the Soviet “Duga Radar” located close to Chernobyl. Hmmmmm best we took a closer look.
And this is what we found, sadly most of it is in a poor state but it was still really interesting to have a look at and climb.
Just a few snaps of the other interesting stuff on the site
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