Sample radio telescope panel, 1986

Sample radio telescope panel, 1986. Sectioned sample panel from the James Clerk Maxwell sub-millimetre radio telescope (JCMT). Developed at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire. Radio telescopes are particularly useful for observing objects obscured by gas and dust, and thus invisible at optical wavelengths. Completed in 1987, the JCMT, operated by the UK, Canada and the Netherlands, is the largest telescope of its type in the world. Observations at micromillimetre wavelengths (the JCMT covers wavelengths between 2mm and 0.3mm) are severely hampered by absorption by water vapour in the atmosphere. To limit this problem, the telescope is sited at an altitude of 4092m on the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. ©SSPL/Science Museum