Britain’s Jodrell Bank telescope will become the biggest cinema screen in the world next month to celebrate its golden jubilee.

Movies 150ft tall will be projected onto the giant radio dish’s surface for two nights when it is turned to face an open-air audience at Knutsford, Cheshire.

Clips during the shows, on October 5th and 6th, will include images of early space exploration, astronomy, plus film of construction of the telescope, now named after founder Sir Bernard Lovell.

The telescope came into operation in October, 1957, coinciding with the dawn of the space age. It hit the headlines almost immediately by tracking the launch of the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1, by the Soviet Union.

It also received the first pictures transmitted from the previously unseen far side of the Moon in 1959 and the first pictures from the lunar surface in 1966.

Earlier this year, radio hams kicked off Jodrell Bank’s jubilee celebrations by bouncing birthday greeting messages off the Moon, to be picked up by the 250ft wide radio dish.

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