Tag: Science

Jodrell Bank: travel content for the Boundless magazine centenary issue

Boundless is the magazine for nearly a quarter of a million members of Boundless, the travel, motoring and leisure club for the public sector.

The latest issue celebrated the centenary of the organisation and I contributed some travel features, exploring sites of major events over the decades — now turned tourist attractions.

One of them was Jodrell Bank [pictured above]. Read more …

When the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik One satellite in 1957, it lit the blue touchpaper for the international space race.

This paved the way for America’s Apollo space programme and fuelled cold-war tensions between Russia and the West.

But the new world order also made an unlikely hero of a science-loving boffin at a rural Cheshire outpost.

Sir Bernard Lovell founded Jodrell Bank after WWII to pioneer work on radar.

By 1950, his team had detected the nebula in Andromeda and, as the space race intensified, Jodrell’s landmark Lovell Telescope was charged with tracking Russian cosmonauts.

Today that Grade I-listed telescope sits at the heart of the Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre, the observatory and science park set amid Cheshire farmland.

Jodrell Bank has come a long way since its post-war origins, earning a place on the UNESCO World Heritage list and hosting the annual Bluedot music festival, but it remains true to Sir Bernard’s space-race vision.

Read more at Boundless, March/April 2023.

How to step behind the scenes at Jodrell Bank science centre, Cheshire

Sir Bernard Lovell became the father of modern cosmology long before Professor Brian Cox started pondering the wonders of the universe.

I went to walk in Lovell’s footsteps recently at the Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre [pictured above], the observatory and science park in rural Cheshire.

Last weekend saw the opening of the new site’s new First Light Pavilion, the dome-shaped building mirroring the shape and scale of the all-seeing-eye telescope.

It hosts the permanent exhibition, The Story of Jodrell Bank, a social-history journey in six chapters from the lo-fi origins of the site to the present day.

Featuring archive material and personal memorabilia from the Lovell family, it celebrates the way Jodrell Bank crosses over from science to heritage.

The new exhibition complements the activities in the other pavilions, which focus more on the science behind stars, explaining concepts such as pulsars, quasars, and the Big Bang amongst others.

“We have a perception that science is only found in laboratories and often highly regulated, but Sir Bernard Lovell always celebrated the beauty of science.”

“He understood that science is an integral part of our heritage and culture,” says Professor Teresa Anderson, Director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Engagement at The University of Manchester.

More www.jodrellbank.net

Read the full story in i Travel, How to step into outer space in rural Cheshire