Spreading across the continent: the Astronomical Society of Australia 1966–2023

Nick Lomb; Toner Stevenson

doi:10.1071/HR24020

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Spreading across the continent: the Astronomical Society of Australia 1966–2023

Nick Lomb

^A ^* and Toner Stevenson ^B

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Centre for Astrophysics, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Qld 4350, Australia.

^B School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: Nick.Lomb@unisq.edu.au

Historical Records of Australian Science https://doi.org/10.1071/HR24020

Published online: 24 October 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of the Australian Academy of Science. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Australian astronomy has undergone huge changes since the middle of the twentieth century, when astronomers generally only had access to the observing facilities of their own institution. In this paper, we look at the changes in the context of the membership of the Astronomical Society of Australia (ASA), since its formation in 1966. Initially, the dominant institutions were the Australian National University, the University of Sydney and the CSIRO, with each of these having more than twice the members of any other Australian institution. Access to world-class national facilities provided by the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT, an optical telescope) from 1975 and the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA, a radio telescope) from 1991, led to increases in astronomer numbers at institutions other than the three dominant ones. More recently, to stay internationally competitive, astronomers need access to even larger observing facilities. One of these facilities is the Square Kilometre Array project (SKA). This radio telescope is to be split between Southern Africa and Australia with SKA-Low, observing in low frequency radio waves, to be sited at a remote location in Western Australia. That plan, and two new SKA precursor instruments, has boosted the number of astronomers in the state, making Western Australia one of the major centres of astrophysical research in Australia.

Keywords: Australia Telescope Compact Array, centres of excellence in astronomy, European Southern Observatory, history of Australian astronomy, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, SKA-Low, the Anglo-Australian Telescope, the Astronomical Society of Australia, the Australia Telescope, the Square Kilometre Array.

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