Jodrell Bank’s Lovell Telescope has faced the ax for cutting science, the BBC understands.

Despite its age, continuous improvements have kept the Lovell telescope at the cutting edge of astronomical research.

It is the third largest steerable radio telescope in the world, and the science has been boosted by linking up with six other telescopes in central England to form the E-MERLIN network.

When these UK telescopes are combined, they can magnify and see objects in deep space in a spectacular way – similar to the Hubble Space Telescope.

The e-Merlin network is used for the following studies:

The E-MERLIN network is part of the pan-European telescopes – without it, images of distant stars and galaxies would be less clear.

Professor Michael Kramer is Director General of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn and Senior Scientist at the University of Manchester.

He told the BBC he believed UKRI’s decision was “scientifically, technologically and economically short-sighted”.

But another important role of Jodrell Bank Observatory is to train UK astronomers in the science of radio astronomy. Astronomers say the closure of the Lovell and E-MERLIN networks could leave Britain behind in the field pioneered by Jodrell Bank.

“Internationally, people look at that and they don’t believe it. They’re cutting off the ability of radio astronomy in the country,” said Prof. Kramer.

This reduction comes at the dawn of what many astronomers believe is the golden age of radio astronomy, at a time when other countries are investing in their own national observatories. This is due to the construction of a new super radio telescope called the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) in South Africa and Australia.