Radio Telescopes: How they work and what they can do

Radio astronomy revolutionised our view of the Universe in the later half of the 20th Century, ushering in the era of “high-energy astrophysics” and leading to discoveries of quasars, pulsar and culminating recently with a remarkable image of the event horizon of a super-massive black hole, a feat roughly equivalent to seeing the detail on a 50 pence coin resting on the Moon’s surface. The science is a “gee-whiz” as it gets and always provides easy wins in popular talks, but the technology behind these discoveries is just as extraordinary, even though little celebrated and has surprising connections to our everyday life. Dr McEllin will talk about how the constant exploitation of the latest techniques in electronics, computing and software has maintained a pace of discoveries that has every prospect of again revolutionising our view of the Universe in the next couple of decades.

 

 

Dr Michael McEllin FInstP FRAS CEng trained in theoretical physics at Cambridge later spending 37 years as a computational physicist in the nuclear industry after completing a PhD on The Structure of Extragalactic Radio Sources, working in Sir Martin Ryle’s Radio Astronomy Group at the Cavendish Laboratory and using the most advanced telescopes then available. He has maintained his interest in astronomy by mentoring a range of science projects in local schools over many years.