A bit of history...
Construction of the Mark I (Lovell) telescope
CREDIT: MERLIN archive
I haven't posted much recently for various reasons, but a lot has happened: another weather satellite has been launched, New Horizons is looking good for launch to Pluto in January, NASA have started a podcast, Hubble spotted new rings and moons around Saturn, science triumphed over intelligent design, Hayabusa has had both sucesses and problems, Colin Pillinger and his team think they may have found the remains of Beagle 2, and Stardust is nearly home.
I've spent this afternoon scanning in some old glass slides that I found over in the archives a while ago. They show the early days of the Observatory when the Lovell telescope (then known as the Mark I) was still in construction and most of the other telescopes on site were collossal wire constructions that barely resemble the telescopes of today. On the left is one of my favorites showing the complexity of the scaffolding used in building the Mark I (click on it for a larger version).
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