The radio astronomy department of the University of Manchester, England. It is located at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire. The main instrument is the 76-metre 250-foot fully steerable dish, known since 1987 as the Lovell Telescope. It was completed in 1957, its construction having been conceived and directed by Bernard Lovell, who had begun radar experiments on the site in 1945 with the hope of detecting cosmic ray showers. An elliptical dish 38 × 25 metres was built in 1964. Since 1980, it has been possible to link the Jodrell Bank telescopes with others at distant sites to form a radio interferometer known as MERLIN.