The Anglo-Australian Telescope and Siding Spring Observatory
Siding Spring Observatory is the home to
the largest optical telescopes in Australia
It is located near Coonabarabran in north-western New South Wales
The images on this page are a collection
mine and those of Sarah (above)
who is a PhD student at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology
The telescopes sit on a mountain top surrounded by the Warrumbungle national park
The Warrumbungle mountain range includes the remnants of an extinct volcano with many exposed volcanic plugs
... and the area is home to wonderful native vegitation
The Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) is the largest optical telescope in Australia
It is a versatile 3.9m telescope that was opened in 1974
You can see the age of the facility
reflected in some of the panels in the control room
where hard working and dedicated astronomers work tirelessly like robots
in their quest to uncover the mysteries of the universe.
This telescope is home to arguably the most
complicated astronomical instrument ever built,
the 2 Degree Field (2DF).
This instrument can take the spectrum of
2000 objects in one night and was a revolution in astronomy.
It allowed the first large scale surveys of the universe by collecting spectra
from hundreds of thousands of galaxies.
The 2DF can do this because its robotic positioner places hundreds of tiny
prisms at the end of
optical fibres (shown above) in the correct position to simultaneously collect
light from hundreds of galaxies.
Despite it age this telescope has been at
the frontier of science throughout its life because
of the amazing work of the scientists that build and upgrade its instruments
like the 2DF.
From the AAT you can see many of the other telescopes on the mountain.
These include the ANU's 2.3m Advanced Technology Telescope (ATT)
One interesting feature of this telescope is that the whole building rotates with the telescope.
From the AAT you can also see the UK
Schmidt 1.2m which has been responsible for many surveys of the southern sky
and it is the sister instrument to the Oschin Schmidt Telescope on Palomar
Mountain in California. The wide
angle images from these telescopes are now used in Google Sky to give you real
images of the whole sky.
Next to the UK Schmidt is the 2m Faulkes Telescope South in its cool clam shell dome.
This telescope was built to be used by school children and professionals.
Derek and I were there filming for the AMPS project (see my science teaching page)
Looking down the light path of this wonderful instrument.
On the back end you can see the CCD's, a spectrograph, computers and even a laptop held on with electrical tape.
To be continued ...
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