The taxpayer funds professional astronomers in the UK. Most astronomical research in Britain is done in universities, either by teaching staff or by students undertaking research for their doctorates or by people on postgraduate fellowships.

Outside the universities there are two facilities that employ astronomers, the Astronomy Technology Centre (UKATC) in Edinburgh and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Both these organisations provide services and facilities such as instruments for telescopes and space missions, that can be used by the whole astronomy community.

The only major observing facility in the UK is the Jodrell Bank radio telescope and the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometry Network (MERLIN), which includes six telescopes ranged across the UK. This is run from Manchester University. The resolution of the array can be improved by including further telescopes across Europe and as far away as China to form the Very Long Base-line Interferometer (VLBI) network.

Astronomy has always had a very strong international flavour not least because of the poor weather in the UK. On Hawaii the UK operates a specialist infrared telescope (UKIRT) and shares the operation of the millimetre wavelength James Clerk Maxwell Telescope with the Netherlands and Canada. The UK also has a 25% share in two major 8m telescopes; Gemini North, now complete and sited on Hawaii and Gemini South, sited in Chile.

The UK has a right to time on the Hubble Space Telescope through its membership of the European Space Agency. The Isaac Newton Group (ING) of telescopes on La Palma and the Anglo Australian Telescope in Australia are both jointly funded and operated by the UK. Some of these relationships will change if Britain succeeds in joining the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and thereby gains access to five of the worlds most efficient 8m telescopes (VLT).

UK astronomers often get observing time on telescopes all over the world by collaborating with local astronomers. This is true of several US telescopes such as the Keck Telescopes, which are privately funded and belong to a single university.

The main conduits for funding astronomy are the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and the Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFC) for England, Scotland and Wales. University staff are largely funded by the HEFCE for both teaching and research, although the Royal Society funds some senior academics. The total STFC astronomy budget stands at about £60 million (NB publication date for this information was 2000).

STFC funds some community facilities such as the UKATC and is responsible for the UK involvement and funding of all national and international astronomy programmes. STFC is responsible for funding research relating to everything more than 100km above the Earth’s surface, which includes everything from solar-terrestrial physics to cosmology. At present cosmology and extragalactic research account for about 25% of research funding, followed by solar and solar-terrestrial physics. STFC supports the research carried out by about 1200 people including about 160 PhD students in 30 universities and at observatories and institutes around the world. STFC is also responsible for scientific collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), which jointly funds many space programmes such as the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn.