The Cavendish Astrophysics Group (formerly the Radio Astronomy Group) is based at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. The group operates all of the telescopes at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory except for the 32m MERLIN telescope, which is operated by Jodrell Bank. The Cavendish Laboratory is in the Department of Physics of the University of Cambridge. ... The University of Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world (after Oxford). ... Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory is home to a number of large aperture synthesis radio telescopes, including the One-Mile and 5km instruments. ... The word Merlin may refer to: Merlin, the wizard, associated with King Arthur. ... The 76m Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory. ...

The group is the second largest of three astronomy departments in Cambridge University.

Instruments under development by the group

• A Heterodyne Array Receiver for B-band (HARP-B) at the James_Clerk_Maxwell_Telescope
• The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) - several modules of this international project
• The Arcminute Microkelvin Imager (AMI)
• The Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer (MRO Interferometer)
• The Planck Surveyor
• The Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST)
• The Extended Very Small Array
• The CLOVER telescopes

The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) is a 15 metre radio telescope Mauna Kea in Hawaii. ... ALMAs logo The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) is an international astronomy project that consists of a system of radio telescopes in an array formation. ... The Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer will be an optical array composed of ten telescopes, each approximately 1. ... The Planck Surveyor is the third Medium-Sized Mission (M3) of ESAs Horizon 2000 Scientific Programme. ... The Very Small Array is a 14-element interferometer perched at an elevation of 3000 metres on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. ... CLOVER array Clover is a new instrument which has been designed to measure the B-mode polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background down to a sensitivity limited by the foreground contamination due to lensing, allowing the detection of primordial gravitational waves in the Universe. ...

Existing / previous instruments

• The 5km Ryle Telescope
• The Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope
• The Cambridge Low Frequency Synthesis Telescope
• The Half-Mile Telescope
• The One-Mile Telescope
• The Interplanetary Scintillation Array which discovered the first pulsar
• The 4C Array which made the 4C catalogue
• The Cambridge_Interferometer
• Various aperture masking instruments for optical aperture synthesis

The Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope CAT was a three-element interferometer for cosmic microwave background observations at 13 to 17 GHz, based at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. ... Composite Optical/X-ray image of the Crab Nebula pulsar, showing surrounding nebular gases stirred by the pulsars magnetic field and radiation. ... Aperture synthesis is a type of interferometry that mixes signals from a collection instruments to produce measurements having the same angular resolution as an instrument the size of the entire collection. ...

Catalogues published by the group

• 3C catalogue 159-MHz
• 4C catalogue 178-MHz
• 5C catalogue 408-MHz and 1407-MHz
• 6C catalogue 151-MHz
• 7C catalogue 151-MHz
• 8C catalogue 38-MHz
• 9C catalogue 15-GHz
• Cambridge Interplanetary Scintillation survey

An astronomical catalog is a list or tabulation of astronomical objects, typically grouped together because they share a common type, morphology, origin, means of detection, or method of discovery. ... The Third Cambridge Catalog of Radio Sources (3C) is an astronomical catalogue of celestial radio sources, was published in 1959 by the University of Cambridge. ...

Famous Group Members

• Sir Martin Ryle, 1918-1984, Nobel Prize for Physics, founder of the group, former British Astronomer Royal
• Tony Hewish, Nobel Prize for Physics, designed the telescope which discovered the first pulsars
• Malcolm Longair Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy, head of Cavendish Laboratory
• Jocelyn Bell Burnell, detected the first signal from a pulsar

Sir Martin Ryle (September 27, 1918 – October 14, 1984) was a British radio astronomer who developed revolutionary radio telescope systems (see e. ... List of Nobel Prize laureates in Physics from 1901 to the present day. ... Astronomer Royal was originally the title of the director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, but since 1972 it has simply been an honorary title. ... Antony Hewish (born Fowey, Cornwall, May 11, 1924) is a British radio astronomer who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 (together with fellow radio-astronomer Martin Ryle) for his role in the discovery of pulsars. ... List of Nobel Prize laureates in Physics from 1901 to the present day. ... The Cavendish Laboratory is in the Department of Physics of the University of Cambridge. ... Jocelyn Bell Burnell (born Jocelyn Bell, 15 July 1943), British astrophysicist who discovered the first radio pulsars with her thesis advisor Antony Hewish. ...

Links

Cavendish Astrophysics Group webpage (http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/)