We are just back from a 4-day road trip to two of the places where Dad used to work before he became a retired astronomer. The top photos are of Siding Spring Observatory (SSO), in the Warrumbungle Mountains of New South Wales. Dad was based at Mt Stromlo Observatory, near Canberra, but most of his research observations were made using telescopes here. In fact, he helped commission 2 of them, the big one in the square building and the small one on the left of the second image. The small one is a 24" diameter one that was specially designed to measure magnetic fields in space and Dad's team were the first to map the field of our Milky Way galaxy (MW) and the Magellanic Clouds (MC) using this telescope way back in the 1970s. The big one is a 2.3m that went into operation in 1984 and Dad made the first science observations with it. The team he was part of used it to work out how the MW and the MC were interfering with other, and to measure the large-scale structure of the Universe. The building shows signs of the bushfire that hit SSO in Jan 2013. The telescopes survived with some repairable heat and smoke damage. Dad's favourite telescope was a 40" that was sold just after he retired, and he also used the big 4m one that you can see in the background of the second image. The last 2 photos are the famous "Dish" at Parkes in central NSW. Most people know it from the movie, but Dad used it for just about all of his projects. The little dish in the background was also important. His group used it to map the Magellanic Stream, the first clue that the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds are an interacting system. Mum has helped with some projects at SSO as well, but in the days before me. I am actually quite proud of my clever Oldies, but I'm not going to tell them yet, and it was great to visit these places with them.
Labels: astronomy, Canberra, New South Wales, telescopes
# posted by Bart Bear @ 10:41 am
