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New Instruments To Picture The Early Universe

July 03, 1996

The latest instrument of the UK's Tenerife Cosmic Microwave Background Experiment, has been officially inaugurated at the mountain top Teide Observatory of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, IAC, on Tenerife.
The ceremony coincided with the announcement by the PPARC of major support for a new telescope of unmatched sensitivity.

        In one of several ceremonies at the Canary Islands Observatories, on June 30, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain inaugurated the newest interferometer, part of a suite of receivers which comprise Manchester University's Cosmic Microwave Background Experiment. Their Majesties did so at the invitation of Tony Quigley, Head of the Science and Engineering Base Directorate, OST, accompanied by Prof Rod Davies (University of Manchester), Prof Rafael Rebolo
(Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias) and Dr Paul Murdin (Head of Astronomy for PPARC).
        
        Scientists from the Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories (NRAL) at Jodrell Bank (part of the University of Manchester) have been continuously developing the suite of sensitive radiometers on Tenerife and, with yet further refinemnts and the latest interferometer in operation, a whole fresh study of the CMB structure is under way.
        
        Mr Quigley said that this was;
                
                " the latest collaboration by British scientists in astronomy in the Canary Islands, the history of which goes back 140 years to the investigation of Teide by Charles Piazzi Smyth, the then Astronomer Royal for Scotland ".

        At the same time the PPARC announced a grant award of £2.6 million that will enable scientists at the universities of Cambridge and Manchester, in collaboration with Spanish astronomers, to construct a major new instrument, the VSA, to image detail of the Universe as it was about 300,000 years after the Big Bang, at less than a 50,000th of its present age. Astrophysicists have long believed that galaxies must have originated from the primeval fireball and left 'imprints' in the relic radiation.The new observations planned should be able to reveal details of the initial stages of the formation of galaxies and may even predict the future of the Universe.

        The wealth of experience obtained by the NRAL with the Tenerife Experiments, and by the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, MRAO, at Cambridge, with its Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope (CAT), will be combined to construct and operate a world-leading high technology full mapping instrument capable of making images of the primordial temperature fluctuautions, ripples in the Cosmic Microwave Background, the CMB; radiation which gives pictures of the seeds of the Universe. These seeds evolve into the complex structures we now know as the galaxies and clusters.                                                                                            
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        The new instrument, called the Very Small Array, because of its small size, will be an array of 15 antennas, which will operate at 30 to 40 Ghz with an angular resolution in the range of 5 arcminutes right up to 2 degrees. The VSA will be located adjacent to the present suite of instruments forming the Tenerife Cosmic Microwave Background Experiment at the Teide Observatory, Tenerife.
(The name ' Very Small Array ' is a laconic British contrast with the name of the largest radio telescope, the Very Large Array in Arizona; the difference in size is due to the small wavelength at which the VSA will observe.)

        Speaking after the inauguration, Dr Paul Murdin said;
        
                " The Tenerife Microwave Background Experiment was the first telescope to make an actual map of CMB anisotropies, whose existence ansd statistical properties had been determined by the epoch-making discovery of the COBE satellite. The Tenerife Experiment identified some features on what COBE scientists called 'the face of God'. These features appeared in later analysis of the whole of the COBE data , COBE and the Tenerife Experiment confirming the other's results. In the future the VSA will map the features in greater detail. All this work is an essential precursor to the British interest in the COBRAS/SAMBA space mission, recently chosen by the European Space Agency, which in the new millenium will produce the definitive complete portrait."


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Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC)