The Cavendish Astrophysics Group (formerly the Radio Astronomy Group) is based at the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

. The group operates all of the telescopes at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory except for the 32m

MERLIN The Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) is an interferometer array of radio telescopes spread across England. The array is run from Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire by the University of Manchester on behalf of UK Re ...

telescope, which is operated by

Jodrell Bank Jodrell Bank Observatory ( ) in Cheshire, England hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio astron ...

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

Instruments under development by the group

* The

Atacama Large Millimeter Array The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is an astronomical interferometer of 66 radio telescopes in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, which observe electromagnetic radiation at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. The ar ...

(ALMA) - several modules of this international project * The Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer (MRO Interferometer) * The SKA * The Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen (REACH)

Instruments in service

* The Arcminute Microkelvin Imager (AMI) * A Heterodyne Array Receiver for B-band (HARP-B) at the

James Clerk Maxwell Telescope The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) is a submillimetre-wavelength radio telescope at Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii, US. The telescope is near the summit of Mauna Kea at . Its primary mirror is 15 metres (16.4 yards) across: it is the la ...

* The Planck Surveyor

Previous instruments

* The CLOVER telescope * The Very Small Array * The 5 km

Ryle Telescope The Ryle Telescope (named after Martin Ryle, and formerly known as the 5-km Array) was a linear east-west radio telescope array at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. In 2004, three of the telescopes were moved to create a compact two-dime ...

* The Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST) * The Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope * The Cambridge Low Frequency Synthesis Telescope * The Half-Mile Telescope * The

One-Mile Telescope The One-Mile Telescope at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (MRAO), Cambridge, UK is an array of radio telescopes (two fixed and one moveable, fully steerable parabolic reflectors operating simultaneously at 1407 MHz and 408 ...

* The Interplanetary Scintillation Array which discovered the first

pulsar A pulsar (''pulsating star, on the model of quasar'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its Poles of astronomical bodies#Magnetic poles, magnetic poles. This radiation can be obse ...

* The 4C Array which made the 4C catalogue * The Cambridge Interferometer * The Long Michelson Interferometer * Various aperture masking instruments for optical

aperture synthesis Aperture synthesis or synthesis imaging is a type of interferometry that mixes signals from a collection of telescopes to produce images having the same angular resolution as an instrument the size of the entire collection. At each separation and ...

Catalogues published by the group

Preliminary survey of the radio stars in the Northern Hemisphere
(sometimes called the 1C catalogue) at 81.5-MHz (unreliable at low flux levels) * 2C catalogue 81.5-MHz (unreliable at low flux levels) * 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 * 10C catalogue 14–18 GHz * Cambridge Interplanetary Scintillation survey

Famous Group Members

* Sir Martin Ryle, 1918–1984, Nobel Prize for Physics, founder of the group, former British

Astronomer Royal Astronomer Royal is a senior post in the Royal Households of the United Kingdom. There are two officers, the senior being the astronomer royal dating from 22 June 1675; the junior is the astronomer royal for Scotland dating from 1834. The Astro ...

* Tony Hewish, Nobel Prize for Physics, designed the telescope which discovered the first pulsars * Malcolm Longair Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy, former head of the

Jocelyn Bell Burnell Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (; Bell; born 15 July 1943) is a Northern Irish physicist who, as a doctoral student, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. This discovery later earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974, but she was not ...

, detected the first signal from a pulsar * John E. Baldwin * Richard Edwin Hills * F. Graham Smith - early co-worker with Ryle, later Astronomer Royal * David Saint-Jacques Canadian astronaut

External links

Cavendish Astrophysics Group webpage
Cavendish Laboratory Astronomy institutes and departments {{UCambridge-stub