Starstruck

Although I've lived in Manchester for almost 34 years - I came here as an eager young student in October 1977 - I'd never visited Jodrell Bank before this summer. Driving through the Cheshire countryside, I'd marvelled at it from a distance, or from the top floor of the carpark at the airport, but until earlier this year I never got up close to the mammoth radio  telescope.

It started to pulse on my radar when I stumbled across a page on the internet about work placements there for school students. This seemed like a fantastic opportunity as Eddie, our son, has become really interested in astronomy and astrophysics, thanks partly to his excellent teachers at Chorlton High School, and partly to Professor Brian Cox and his winning ways on the BBC.

He just missed the closing date to apply this year unfortunately, but we went out to take a look for future reference anyway.

The site has recently opened a new visitors' centre with gardens and cafe and there's such a magical pull to the place we've been back 3 or 4 times with various family visitors over the summer. The telescope itself is awe-inspiring, I don't think that's too strong a description. On a couple of our visits it's been 'parked' for maintenance and painting 

which is impressive enough, but when it's active and moving it actually tingles the hairs on the back of my neck. 

The history of Sir Bernard Lovell's brainchild is brought to life in archive footage from the 50s and 60s which runs on a loop in the discovery centre. These films include a tour of the inside of the telescope - breathtaking camera work as they scale the metal ladders up into the filigree structure supporting the dish. 
The technology, the words and language, the open space and nature, the coffee and cake - there's something for everyone!

Among the poets who've written their impressions of the place is Patric Dickinson. 
Amazingly, this beautiful poem manages to distil so much into 16 short lines

Jodrell Bank

Who were they, what lonely men

Imposed on the fact of night

The fiction of constellations

And made commensurable

The distances between

Themselves, their loves, and their doubt

Of government and nations?

Who made the dark stable

When the light was not? Now

We receive the blind codes

Of spaces beyond the span

Of our myths, and a long dead star

May only echo how

There are no loves nor gods

Men can invent to explain

How lonely all men are. 

Patric Dickinson