Barton, Cambridgeshire

The Arcminute Microkelvin Imager (AMI) consists of a pair of interferometric radio telescopes - the Small and Large Arrays - located at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory near Cambridge. AMI was designed, built and is operated by the Cavendish Astrophysics Group. AMI was designed, primarily, for the study of galaxy clusters by observing secondary anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) arising from the Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. Both arrays are used to observe radiation with frequencies between 12 and 18 GHz, and have very similar system designs. The telescopes are used to observe both previously known galaxy clusters, in an attempt to determine, for example, their masses and temperatures, and to carry out surveys, in order to locate previously undiscovered clusters.

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-dimensional array of telescopes at the east end of the interferometer. The eight antennas have now become the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Large Array. The Ryle Telescope was an eight-element interferometer operating at 15 GHz (2cm wavelength). The elements were equatorially mounted 13-m Cassegrain antennas, on an (almost) east-west baseline. Four aerials were mounted on a 1.2 km rail track, and the others were fixed at 1.2 km intervals. Baselines between 18 m and 4.8 km were therefore available, in a variety of configurations. For high-resolution imaging, the mobile aerials were arranged along the track, to give uniform baseline coverage to 4.8 km; for low-brightness astronomy (e.g. the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect) the mobile aerials were arranged in a 'compact array', with a maximum baseline of about 100 m. All antenna pairs were correlated, so some long baseline data were always available, even in the 'compact array' configuration. As the telescope was an east-west instrument, most imaging observations involved 12-hour observations in order to fill the synthesised aperture (calibration observations are routinely interleaved). Another consequence of the geometry was that it is not practical to image sources near the equator, or in the south. The two-dimensional Large Array overcomes this problem with its new north-south baselines. Although the telescope was not designed as a common user instrument, the operators were happy to accept proposals for observing time on the instrument from outside observers, provided that they did not overlap substantially with existing observing programmes, on a 'best efforts' basis. Monitoring variable sources was possible using short observations which could often be inserted between longer 'standard' observations. The telescope had three main scientific programs: study of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in galaxy clusters, particularly in determining the Hubble constant; surveying for radio sources that would contaminate degree-scale observations of the cosmic microwave background made with the Very Small Array, and flux monitoring of galactic variable sources.

The Cambridge Low-Frequency Synthesis Telescope (CLFST) is an east-west aperture synthesis radio telescope currently operating at 151 MHz. It consists of 60 tracking yagis on a 4.6 km baseline, giving 776 simultaneous baselines. These provide a resolution of 70×70 cosec (declination) arcsec2, with a sensitivity of about 30 to 50 mJy/beam, and a field of view of about 9°×9°. The telescope is situated at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. The CLFST has made three astronomical catalogues of the Northern Hemisphere: 6C survey at 151 MHz 7C survey at 151 MHz 8C survey at 38 MHz

Lord's Bridge was a railway station on the Varsity Line which ran between Oxford and Cambridge. Situated in the north of the parish of Harlton on the western outskirts of Cambridge, it was the penultimate station before the line's eastern terminus at Cambridge. The station opened in 1862 and closed more than a century later in 1968. The site is now part of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, which includes several rail-mounted radio-telescopes.

COAST, the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope, is a multi-element optical astronomical interferometer with baselines of up to 100 metres, which uses aperture synthesis to observe stars with angular resolution as high as one thousandth of one arcsecond (producing much higher resolution images than individual telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope). The principal limitation is that COAST can only image bright stars. COAST was the first long-baseline interferometer to obtain high-resolution images of the surfaces of stars other than Sun (although the surfaces of other stars had previously been imaged at lower resolution using aperture masking interferometry on the William Herschel Telescope). The COAST array was conceived by John E. Baldwin and is operated by the Cavendish Astrophysics Group. It is situated at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cambridgeshire, England.

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 60-ft-diameter parabolic reflectors operating simultaneously at 1407 MHz and 408 MHz) designed to perform aperture synthesis interferometry.

The Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope (CAT) was a three-element interferometer for cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB/R) observations at 13 to 17 GHz, based at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. In 1995, it was the first instrument to measure small-scale structure in the cosmic microwave background. When the more sensitive Very Small Array came online, the CAT telescope was decommissioned in a ceremonial bonfire.

The Half-Mile Telescope was constructed in 1968 (2 aerials) at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory with two more aerials being added in 1972, using donated dishes (total cost was £70,000). Two of the dishes are fixed, while two are moveable and share the One-Mile's rail track; to obtain information from the maximum number of different baselines, 30 days of observing were required. Observing frequency 1.4 GHz (21 cm wavelength), bandwidth 4 MHz. Used for Hydrogen Line studies of nearby galaxies and produced the first good radio maps of hydrogen distribution (as a function of its velocity), for M33 and M31 (also produced nearly 20 PhDs and 50 published papers). The telescope was operated by the Radio Astronomy Group of the Cambridge University.

The Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (MRAO) is located near Cambridge, UK and is home to a number of the largest and most advanced aperture synthesis radio telescopes in the world, including the One-Mile Telescope, 5-km Ryle Telescope, and the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager. It was founded by the University of Cambridge and is part of the Cambridge University, Cavendish Laboratories, Astrophysics Department.

The Interplanetary Scintillation Array (also known as the IPS Array or Pulsar Array) is a radio telescope that was built in 1967 at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and was operated by the Cavendish Astrophysics Group. The instrument originally covered 4 acres (16,000 m²). It was enlarged to 9 acres in 1978, and was refurbished in 1989. The array operates at a radio frequency of 81.5 MHz (3.7 m wavelength), and is made up of 4,096 dipole antennas in a phased array. Using 14 beams, it can map the northern sky in one day. The observatory's staff use sheep to keep grass away from the antennas because a lawn mower cannot fit in the spaces. Antony Hewish designed the IPS Array to measure the high-frequency fluctuations of radio sources, originally for monitoring interplanetary scintillation. Hewish received a Nobel prize after the high time-resolution of the array allowed the detection of pulsars by Jocelyn Bell in 1967.The IPS Array has more recently been used to track and help forecast interplanetary weather, and specifically to monitor the solar wind. It is now essentially retired, and has lost a significant fraction of its area.

The 4C Array is a cylindrical paraboloid radio telescope at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, near Cambridge, England. It is similar in design to the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope. It is 450 m long, 20 m wide, with a second, moveable element (now mostly removed; some of it is still visible, beyond COAST). The first large aperture synthesis telescope (1958), it was also the first new instrument to be built at Lord's Bridge, after the Observatory was moved there in 1957, and needed 64 km (40 mi) of reflector wire (since removed). The 4C operated at 178 MHz (1.7 m), and located nearly 5000 sources of the 4C (4th Cambridge) catalogue published in 1965 and 1966, which helped establish the evolution of the radio galaxy population of the universe. The telescope is now inoperable. It is flanked to the northwest by the Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope enclosure and to the south by the One-Mile and Half-Mile Telescopes.

Coton is a small village and civil parish about three miles (about 5 km) west of Cambridge in Cambridgeshire, England and about the same distance east of the Prime Meridian. It is in the district of South Cambridgeshire. The parish covers an area of 392 hectares (970 acres). In the 2001 census it had a population of 773, with approximately 336 dwellings and 322 households. The population at the 2011 census was 910.