ESERO-UK visit to Jodrell Bank

This week Tom Lyons, ESERO-UK Teacher Fellow, and myself visited Jodrell Bank and marvelled at the giant Lovell Telescope. Since 2003 there have only been intermittent visitor facilities at Jodrell Bank since sections were demolished, however the new visitor centre includes a Planet Pavilion and a Space Pavilion. The Space Pavilion provides visitors with hands on interactive activities, based around the workings of Jodrell Bank, live data from the Lovell Telescope and information from people who work at Jodrell Bank.

Tom and I were looking at Jodrell Bank to find out if it would be a suitable space to host an ESERO-UK CPD session, similar to the current course that is held at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh utilising the James Webb Telescope.

We followed the pathway close to the base of the Lovell Telescope and you can see the scale of this enormous telescope in this photograph with me walking along the path. At 76 metres in diameter this is the world's 3rd-largest fully-steerable telescope.

We did of course finish the trip with a visit to the cafe which has a great collection of clocks each programmed to tick at the correct speed to show the time on different planets such as the very slow moving Venus and the stock still black hole.

Alice Coates, STEM Project Officer, National STEM Centre