Never-before-seen images of the Jodrell Bank Observatory have been released to the public ahead of the opening of a new £21.5 million visitor attraction.
The First Light Pavilion – which is part of the wider First Light Project, and is all about telling the stories of its pioneering scientists and opening up the inspirational history of the important Cheshire site – will showcase archives and artefacts, together with animations and projections, when it officially opens to the public this Saturday 4 June.
This major addition to the observatory will open up the inspiring history of the site by sharing the stories of its scientists, and its groundbreaking feats of science and engineering, as well as giving visitors the chance to experience a meteor shower, crawl into a black hole, or even see like a snake.
The building itself was an original idea developed by Jodrell Bank professors Teresa Anderson and Tim O’Brien, was designed by the award-winning architect HASSELL Studio, and takes the form of a grass-topped 76m-diameter dome.
It’s said to “cleverly mirror the shape and scale of the landmark Lovell Telescope”.
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Ahead of @JodrellBank’s First Light Pavilion opening this weekend, our Exec Director @Isabel_hunt710 has revealed a personal connection.
— National Lottery Heritage Fund (@HeritageFundUK) May 30, 2022
One such charming example is the story of Thomas ‘Barry’ Wade – the father of The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Executive Director, Isabel Hunt – who, having lived through WWII and then completed his National Service, put his civil engineering degree from Sheffield University to use at his first civilian job as a trainee engineer at Jodrell Bank from 1951-1952.
During his time on the site, Barry and his colleagues worked on prototype versions of the famous Lovell Telescope.
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Unseen images of the Jodrell Bank Observatory have been released to the public / Credit: Isabel Hunt
The unseen images, which have now been released, have been passed down from his working days and not only show Barry and his colleagues’ engineering skills, but also give an insight into what the Jodrell Bank site looked like at the time.
Speaking on the release of the unseen images, Isabel Hunt said: “When I joined The National Lottery Heritage Fund, I was really looking forward to making a difference for the UK’s heritage, but it was even more exciting to find out that one of our major investments at Jodrell Bank was intertwined with my very own family heritage.
“My father spoke very fondly of his time at Jodrell Bank.
“Along with all the other fascinating history being shared as part of the First Light Project, I am sure these stories will inspire the next generation of engineers.”
The images have been released ahead of the opening of a new £21.5 million visitor attraction / Credit: Isabel HuntThe pictures tell the story of Thomas ‘Barry’ Wade, who worked as a trainee engineer at Jodrell Bank from 1951-1952 / Credit: Isabel Hunt
Speaking ahead of the opening of the First Light Pavilion this weekend, Professor Anderson – Director at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Engagement – said: “After years of planning, we are thrilled to finally be able to announce the opening of First Light – a moment [that] will mark a whole new chapter for Jodrell Bank.
“We’re looking forward to welcoming our first visitors through the doors and in to this beautiful new space.”
The project has been made possible with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
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The National Lottery Heritage Fund awarded £12.5 million to the project “so that the site’s powerful human stories of curiosity, exploration, and discovery could be shared with the public”, according to chief executive Eilish McGuinness.
She added: “Jodrell Bank is truly a unique heritage site, of national and international importance, with an inspirational story of Britain’s role as a leader in the science of the exploration of the universe.”
You can find out more about the First Light Pavilion here.
Featured Image – Isabel Hunt
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Bents Garden Centre – the Christmas wonderland that everyone, including Molly-Mae Hague, obsesses over
Daisy Jackson
Don’t ask us when it happens, but there’s a point in life where you favourite place on earth becomes a garden centre.
And garden centres don’t come much fancier than Bents Garden Centre, an enormous sprawl of a building filled with the obvious stuff (like, you know, garden plants) but also so much more.
The Warrington favourite is never more popular than at Christmas, when it turns into a twinkling wonderland and people from across the north west make the pilgrimage.
There are colourful decorations spilling out from every corner, from themed baubles to fairy lights to festive soft furnishings.
Bents Garden Centre does not hold back on its decorating – this year alone there are Alpine dining scenes, a life-size car with presents spilling out of the boot, and an arctic landscape with polar bears and igloos.
That’s on top of a whole display inspired by an ice cream parlour, and others that take inspiration from woodland and The Grinch.
There’s also a winter food market, where wooden lodges sell everything from Yorkshire pudding wraps to bratwurst sausages to beef brisket sandwiches.
Inside Bents Garden Centre at Christmas. Credit: The Manc Group
In the outside space there are heated dining globes, decorated with plants, blankets and bunting.
Bents garden centre is so popular, it even had a fairly famous visitor a couple of years ago, when Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury popped in for a day out, documenting the whole thing to her (at the time) 1.7m YouTube subscribers.
She proudly showed off a trolley piled high with food-themed baubles, in the shape of cakes, doughnuts, gingerbread men, candy canes, and even a giant pink lollipop.
She said: “Don’t ask me why we’ve never come here before. It’s SO cosy.”
Molly-Mae added: “This garden centre, Bents, in I think Warrington, it’s unbelievable. I don’t know why we’ve never come here before.
“It’s kind of like a farm shop too, they’ve got food and food stalls. I am so excited to come back here with a baby next year, like it’s so special.
“It is quite expensive I’m not gonna lie, to get all the decorations and things, but we’ll keep them each year and reuse them.”
Manchester scientists have unlocked the ‘explosive’ secrets of the squirting cucumber
Emily Sergeant
Manchester is constantly positioning itself at the forefront of scientific discoveries.
Scientists born or based in our city have played truly integral parts in so many major breakthroughs throughout the centuries, including the invention of the first electronic stored-program computer in 1948, the discovery of the electron in 1897, and more recently in the 21st century, the creation of graphene in 2004.
But could this be their most important discovery yet? Probably not… but it certainly grabbed our attentions, that’s for sure.
That’s because scientists from the University of Manchester (UoM), together with the University of Oxford, have uncovered the secrets behind one of nature’s quirkiest plants – the Ecballium elaterium, also known as ‘the squirting cucumber’.
While the name might suggest otherwise, this breakthrough by Manchester‘s-own is no joke.
Manchester scientists have unlocked the ‘explosive’ secrets of the squirting cucumber / Credit: Wikimedia Commons
This cucumber – which has intrigued scientists due to its dramatic seed dispersal method for a long time – spreads its seeds by launching them at high speed in a pressurised jet, sending them more than 10 metres from the parent plant.
For as long as the plant has intrigued scientists, the exact mechanism and its benefits were said to be “poorly understood”.
But now, through using high-speed videography, image analysis, lab experiments, and mathematical modelling to examine each phase of the seed ejection process, scientists have found that, as the cucumber ripens, fluid from the fruit is squeezed into the stem, causing it to stiffen and straighten, and changing the inclination of the fruit so that it is better suited for launching seeds over long distances.
The internal pressure in the fruit is so high that, once it detaches from the stem, the fluid and seeds within the shell are explosively launched in a powerful jet.
Using applied maths, we have just decoded one of the most rapid motions in the plant kingdom: the squirting cucumber. Published today in PNAS, our work reveals how the stem stiffens to optimise the angle at which the fruit squirts its seeds in a jet of slime: pic.twitter.com/qVLAcNpWpE
This finding has been described as having “important implications” for the understanding of the plant’s population dynamics, could help scientists better understand how plants might adapt to environmental changes such as temperature, rainfall patterns, and soil conditions due to climate change, and even inspire new technologies.
It also offers insights into evolutionary adaptations related to explosive fruit mechanisms.
Lead researcher Finn Box, from The University of Manchester, said that the Ecballium elaterium’s seed dispersal is a process that’s “almost unheard of in the plant world”.
He added that this particular research is “the first comprehensive mechanical explanation for how the cucumber plant launches its seeds with remarkable speed and precision”.
Emily Sergeant -
3rd June 2022 
