Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory

Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (MRAO) The radio astronomy observatory of the University of Cambridge, founded in 1957 at Lord's Bridge near Cambridge, England. The technique of aperture synthesis was developed at MRAO. Many radio sources are referred to by their designations in the third, fourth, fifth, etc. Cambridge sky surveys (3C, 4C, 5C, etc.). The Observatory's main instrument is the Ryle Telescope, an aperture-synthesis array. The One-Mile Telescope, opened in 1964, was an earlier aperture-synthesis instrument, consisting of three 18-m dishes in an east–west line, but it is no longer used. Other instruments include the Cambridge Low Frequency Synthesis Telescope (CLFST), a survey instrument consisting of 60 Yagi antennas arranged along the line of the Ryle Telescope. An array of 4096 dipole antennas covering 3.6 hectares is used to study scintillation of radio sources; an earlier version of this instrument, half the size, detected the first pulsars in 1967. The Arcminute MicroKelvin Imager (AMI), an array of ten 3.7-m antennae to study features in the cosmic microwave background, was due to come into operation in 2004. MRAO also hosts a 32-m dish of the Multi-Element Radio-Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN), and the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST). http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/telescopes/