Ryle Telescope


Ryle Telescope

(rÿl) (formerly five-Kilometer Telescope) An aperture synthesis radio telescope in Cambridge, UK, and part of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, University of Cambridge; it is named after Sir Martin Ryle. It consists of four fixed and four rail-mounted dishes positioned along a 4.6 km E–W baseline, giving a total of 28 separate interferometer spacings. The dishes have a diameter of 13 meters and a surface accuracy of better than 1 mm. The telescope was refurbished in the late 1980s for microwave background work, and observes with a bandwidth of 350 MHz at 15 and 5 GHz, giving fields of view of 5 and 15 arcminutes and resolutions of 0.7 and 2 arcseconds respectively.