... Astrophysics Group . ... Cosmology . ... MRAO Telescopes . ... Much of the effort of the Observatory is directed towards imaging the cosmic microwave background radiation. This radiation is a very faint relic of the stage when the Universe was a small hot fireball with an age of only some 300,000 years. ... By mapping differences in radiation intensity from point to point across the sky, one can find out about the growth of material structures in the Universe as the fireball phase was ending. ...