(Source: The Times Website)

The network of seven giant astronomy dishes that has made this country a leader in the study of stars and planets is to be axed under plans to save £2.5 million a year.

Scientists say that the funding proposals, drawn up by the Government’s Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC), will destroy Britain’s leading role in radio astronomy.

Jodrell Bank is faced with closure as an observatory under the proposals to end public funding for e-Merlin, a project linking the seven radio telescopes. Parts of the network, such as Jodrell Bank, have been responsible for some of the most important astronomical discoveries of the past 50 years, from the tracking of Sputnik rockets in the 1950s to the most accurate proof of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, carried out in the past two years.

Close to £8 million has already been spent — and is set to go to waste — on improving links between the dishes in an upgrade intended to make the “world-class” array of radiotelescopes 30 times more powerful.

Annual running costs of £2.5 million had been promised by the council, a government funding body for science with a £670 million budget. It has now advised that the funding be dropped.

The move is part of the council’s attempts to reduce its spending after an £80 million shortfall in funding from the Government last year.

Ending financial support for e-Merlin, the national facility for radioastronomy, will destroy the scientific field in Britain unless alternative funding can be found. It is likely to spell the end of Jodrell Bank’s operational life because the observatory, run by the University of Manchester, is the headquarters for the project and concentrates most of its efforts on it.

Last night the Government was unavailable for comment on the plans, described by the Royal Astronomical Society as a “severe dent” to Britain’s reputation for space study. Last month Ian Pearson, the Science Minister, said that with the world “on the cusp” of a new era of space exploration Britain should not let itself be left behind.

Yesterday David Willetts, the Shadow Innovation Secretary, said of the funding plans: “The Government has failed to appreciate the damage that is being done to the science community and needs to think again.”

The Tories have the support of 16 MPs, including Labour MPs, for an early day motion condemning the impact of the cuts.

Radio astronomy offers a window on the stars that provides insights into the make-up of the Universe and how stars and planets are created. Without the array of radiotelescopes, which even before the upgrade was the most powerful of its kind, radio astronomers in Britain would lose their position at the forefront of the field.

Phil Diamond, the director of Jodrell Bank, said that the loss of e-Merlin, the upgraded version of the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (Merlin), would be catastrophic for radio astronomy. “It will essentially mean the STFC are closing down a field of astronomy. A lot of the scientific community would be outraged.”

Simon Garrington, head of the Merlin project, said of the funding cut: “It would be an enormous blow if it came to pass. It would mean a complete withdrawal from observational radio astronomy in the UK. Merlin is the UK’s national radio astronomy facility. It’s unique.”

Merlin’s strength comes from having seven telescope dishes, including the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank, linked to receive signals from space simultaneously. Because they operate in tandem up to 135 miles apart they offer unrivalled detail on distant gallaxies.

Michael Rowan-Robinson, president of the Royal Astronomical Society, said that to cut back on the project would damage the nation’s prospects of playing a leading role in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a radio telescope network expected to be built in Australia or South Africa by 2020. The SKA is the biggest project in the field and would offer scientists unprecedented opportunities for making discoveries about how the Universe operates.

Professor Rowan-Robinson said that if it got rid of Merlin and Jodrell Bank, which was announced last year as the headquarters for the SKA development project, Britain would start to lose the expertise it needed for a central role.

The proposed cuts were announced at a meeting in London this week when the STFC revealed it considered Merlin a low priority. Melville Hoare, an astronomer at the University of Leeds, stood up to protest. Yesterday he said: “The decision should certainly be reversed. The £8 million that’s been spent will go to waste. That’s government money, taxpayers’ money. It is galling and so ridiculous.”

Without Merlin, Dr Hoare said, “UK astronomy in particular would suffer. There would be key areas of astronomy — the formation and evolution of stars, the formation of gallaxies, the physics of black holes, — that we just wouldn’t be able to do.”

Peter Barratt, of the STFC, said that it had been given less money by the Government than had been hoped. A final decision on which projects would have to be axed had yet to be made and the assessment of priorities had been put out to consultation.

Money well spent?

£2.5m is the annual running costs of Jodrell Bank. The Government has spent the same amount on:

— compensating prisoners for claims of abuse, assault, unlawful detention and medical negligence last year

— expenses claimed by Cabinet ministers in 2007

— council tax rebate for Armed Forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan

— value of Admiralty House, the grace-and-favour apartment occupied by Lord Malloch-Brown, Foreign Office Minister

— grants and subsidies to the Prince of Wales last year 

Video Sky at Night - October 2007 - Jodrell Bank at 50