Almost 50 staff at the Royal Greenwich Observatory at Cambridge were this week issued with redundancy notices as the 323-year-old observatory begins to run down. Twenty employees have already left following the decision last July by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council to transfer all astronomy technical support to Edinburgh. Most of this week's 49 notices apply to technical staff. The fate of the remaining 30 staff is still being negotiated, but according to the unions, by the time the RGO closes in October, at least 75 of the 100 staff will have lost their jobs.