The Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories, Jodrell Bank is one of the world's leading centres for radio astronomy. The 76m Lovell telescope is used independently for spectroscopy, pulsar observations and other programmes requiring high sensitivity.
Research projects cover a wide range of topics in astronomy, astrophysics and techniques.
A major effort is on gravitational lensing, making large surveys for new lenses and detailed studies of each example found, partly aimed at finding Hubble's constant. Active nuclei and their relativistic jets are studied in systems ranging from nearby Seyferts to the most distant quasars. Galactic research topics include star formation, the interstellar medium, cosmic masers and circumstellar magnetic fields. There is a strong group working on pulsars, including searches for millisecond pulsars. Other stellar work centres on interacting binaries, radio flare stars, and mass loss from red giants.