£21.5m visitor attraction for Jodrell Bank

The Jodrell Bank Observatory is to open a new £21.5m interactive visitor attraction this summer.

The First Light Pavilion, due to open on 4 June, will showcase archives and artefacts together with animations and projections.

Visitors will be able to experience a meteor shower, crawl into a black hole or see like a snake.

It is part of the First Light Project, telling the stories of its pioneering scientists.

The concept for the new building was an original idea developed by Jodrell Bank professors Teresa Anderson and Tim O’Brien.

The pavilion will house a custom-built auditorium showing planetarium-style shows and a cafe using seasonal and sustainable produce.

A new temporary exhibition gallery will show the building’s construction processes, such as how the telescope panels were removed and restored to form the backdrop of the main exhibition.

A guided tour that takes visitors to previously inaccessible parts of the Jodrell Bank site will also be launched later in the year.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund awarded £12.5m to the project “so that the site’s powerful human stories of curiosity, exploration and discovery could be shared with the public”, chief executive Eilish McGuinness said.

“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,” she added.

Jodrell Bank, which opened in 1957, is known as the birthplace of radio astronomy and is one of the earliest radio telescopes in the world.

It has been at the forefront of astronomical research since its inception in 1945 and tracked US and Russian craft during the space race.

Part of the University of Manchester, it was added to the Unesco World Heritage List in 2019 and is dominated by the landmark Lovell Telescope.