Related papers: Sydney's Scientific Beginnings: William Dawes' Obs…
On 13 May 1787, a convict fleet of 11 ships left Portsmouth, England, on a 24,000 km, 8-month-long voyage to New South Wales. The voyage would take the "First Fleet" under Captain Arthur Phillip via Tenerife (Canary Islands), the port of…
Voyages of exploration often included astronomers among their crew to aid with maritime navigation. William Dawes, a British Marine who had been trained in practical astronomy, was assigned to the "First Fleet", a convoy of eleven ships…
Between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, long-haul oceanic voyages of exploration and discovery routinely carried astronomical tent observatories to support land-based longitude determinations using heavy and cumbersome…
The discoveries of the radio source Centaurus A and its optical counterpart NGC 5128 were important landmarks in the history of Australian astronomy. NGC 5128 was first observed in August 1826 by James Dunlop during a survey of southern…
The traditional cultures of Aboriginal Australians include a significant astronomical component, perpetuated through oral tradition, ceremony, and art. This astronomical knowledge includes a deep understanding of the motion of objects in…
By almost any measure, the Parkes Radio Telescope is the most successful scientific instrument ever built in Australia. The telescope is unsurpassed in terms of the number of astronomers, both national and international, who have used the…
Whilst camped at Ooldea, South Australia, between 1919 and 1935, the amateur anthropologist Daisy Bates CBE (1859-1951) recorded the daily lives, lore, and oral traditions of the Aboriginal people of the Great Victoria Desert region…
On February 23 1987 a supernova (exploding star) was observed in the Large Cloud of Magellan, the brightest supernova in 400 years. It spurred the commencement of collaborative research in astrophysics between Japan and New Zealand that is…
By the twelfth century, northern European scholars gradually embraced Arabic innovations in science and technology. England naturally developed into a significant centre of the new learning in western Europe. Hereford, and specifically its…
By c. 3000 BC, in the late Neolithic, there had been a significant change in the way people materialized their cosmology across Scotland with the introduction of free-standing stones. These were erected almost until the end of the Bronze…
Astrophysics facilities have been of tremendous importance for planetary science. The flagship space observatory Hubble Space Telescope has produced ground-breaking Solar System science, but when launched it did not even have the capability…
Negotiations began 1n 1968 for a telescope facility at Perth Observatory for NASA's International Planetary Patrol Network. 1,000 days later the telescope saw first light. The facility bears no resemblance to other observatories. Inside a…
The use of the observed positions of celestial bodies to determine the location of a navigator and to direct vessels, was an aspiration of ancient seafarers. Various peoples, in the Mediterranean as much as in the Indian Ocean, in China as…
Over two hundred years ago Capt. James Cook sailed up Whitsunday Passage, just a few miles where we now sit, on a voyage of astronomical observation and discovery that remains an inspiration to us all. Since the prospects of our visiting…
For the past 400 years, astronomers have sought to observe and interpret the Universe by building more powerful telescopes. These incredible instruments extend the capabilities of one of our most important senses, sight, towards new limits…
It has already been empirically verified that for many Bronze Age monuments erected in Scotland between 1400-900 BC, there was a concerted effort on behalf of the builders to align their monuments to astronomical bodies on the horizon. It…
This paper was given to mark the centenary of the death of David Gill, the foremost British astronomer in the last quarter of the 19th century and into the 20th century. Gill abandoned a successful career as a clock and watchmaker. His…
In 1755 Thomas Bayes expressed an interest in the problem of combining repeated measurements of the location of a star. Bayes described a tandem set-up of a ball thrown on a table, followed by repeated throws of a second ball. Bayes' table…
The mid-17th century saw unprecedented scientific progress. With the Middle Ages well and truly over, the Scientific Revolution had begun. However, scientific advancement does not always proceed along well-planned trajectories. Chance…
In coming years, Australia may find the need to build new optical telescopes to continue local programmes, contribute to global survey projects, and form a local multi-wavelength connection for the new radio telescopes being built. In this…