The Tenerife Experiment was a Cosmic Microwave Background ( CMB) experiment built by

Jodrell Bank Jodrell Bank Observatory () in Cheshire, England, hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio astron ...

(then known as the Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories) of the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

in collaboration with the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias ( IAC). It was the first CMB experiment to be installed and run at the

Observatorio del Teide Teide Observatory ( es, Observatorio del Teide), IAU code 954, is an astronomical observatory on Mount Teide at , located on Tenerife, Spain. It has been operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias since its inauguration in 1964. It beca ...

Tenerife Tenerife (; ; formerly spelled ''Teneriffe'') is the largest and most populous island of the Canary Islands. It is home to 43% of the total population of the archipelago. With a land area of and a population of 978,100 inhabitants as of Janu ...

, starting operations in October 1984, and running with various upgrades and additional experiments until 2000. It measured anisotropy of the CMB on angular sizes of 5 degrees, about the size of the upper half of the constellation of Orion (from the "belt" to the "shoulders"). To reduce receiver instability, it performed fast

Dicke Switching Dicke is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Amie Dicke (born 1978), Dutch artist * Finn Dicke (born 2004), Dutch footballer * Pien Dicke (born 1999), Dutch field hockey player * Robert H. Dicke (1916–1997), American physicist ...

between two horns separated by 8 degrees. To remove long term drifts and atmospheric variations, it used a further switch of 8 degrees using a flat mirror in front of the horns.

References

{{Jodrell Bank Observatory Jodrell Bank Observatory Radio telescopes Cosmic microwave background experiments