SCIENTISTS have been looking at the first inter-galactic signals being beamed to Jodrell Bank as part of a pioneering new stargazing system.

Never-before-seen images of the farthest reaches of the universe will be next – hopefully within months.

The Express was given access to the astrophysicists at work – including the super-computer behind it all – on what is a unique telescopic link-up across England.

The world-renowned Lower Withington site is the hub of a new project so powerful, it will collect the equivalent of three years of new data in a single day – as much as the entire UK internet network.

It is a zoom-in on the stars made possible by synchronising radio signals from seven UK telescopes, two of which – Lovell and Mark II – are at the Jodrell Bank observatory.

Using underground optical fibre cables rather than microwaves, the project known as e-MERLIN allows scientists to study the skies in far more detail than ever before. And they hope to have these enhanced images at Jodrell within months.

"What we hope to see are the earliest stages of planet formation – from dust to pebbles, to rocks, to mountains, to planets – for the very first time," said Tim O’Brien, senior astrophysics lecturer at Jodrell Bank.

He describes it as like looking back in time to the point at which most of the stars in the present day universe were formed.

"We don’t have a time machine to go and see the sun being born, but we can look at any galaxy to watch a star like the sun being born instead," said Tim, 45, a lecturer at Jodrell for ten years. E-MERLIN is going to address a range of key questions in astrophysics.  We suspect most galaxies have got supermassive black holes maybe 100 million times the size of the sun at their core. Through this technology we can see through the dust clouds between stars, which obscure our view of the central region of galaxies."

Another question is whether a black hole forms around a galaxy, or if it is the seed for the galaxy.

The Mark II telescope, and one in Pickmere near Knutsford, are the first two to have been linked up and started receiving signals a fortnight ago. Mark II, which at 82ft wide is just a third the size of Lovell, was the world’s first telescope to be controlled by a computer.

JODRELL Bank works regularly with NASA, according to Tim O’Brien.

"I recently used the Hubble telescope to help look at a star that exploded," he said.

"There is a common sharing of equipment with NASA. At any given time our telescopes could be used by any astronomer in the world. We combine our views with those from other telescopes like Hubble – it is different pieces of a jigsaw we are all trying to put together.  It is known as an open-skies policy."