2020-03-01_Cosmos_Magazine

1896

FIRST MODERN OLYMPICS

1899

SECOND BOER WAR STARTS

1890 Construction of the

“star camera” at Sydney

Observatory is completed.

Its technology is at the

forefront of celestial

photography.

1891 The first glass plate

is measured at Sydney

Observatory.

THE WORTH OF STELLAR HISTORY

When the Sydney AC’s final volume was published

in 1964, Australia’s involvement officially came to an

end. The global endeavour to chart the heavens had

lasted almost eight decades. Stevenson estimates that

over that time Australia’s astronomers charted and

measured the positions of more than 1.5 million stars.

They photographed 142,021 glass plates and published

over 50 catalogue volumes. Stevenson’s research

indicates that Sydney and Melbourne completed their

Carte photography; Perth exposed only 100 plates

before abandoning the project after 1903.

The global astronomy and scientific community

managed the immensity of the AC andCarteprojects

through the opening and closing of observatories and

multiple funding and budget cuts. Work had waxed

and waned but seemed to be a constant through a

world changing around it. The project had continued

through the Great Depression and two world wars.

Even when Melbourne Observatory ceased research

in 1945 and closed in 1948, Sydney Observatory

decided to complete the unfinished measurements

and take the projects through to completion.

Astronomy had also moved on. In the 1940s,

Ruby Payne-Scott’s work in radio physics and radio

astronomy cemented her as an Australian pioneer –

she is among the first female radio astronomers. In

1961, the Parkes radio telescope was opened. Just

five years after Australia’s work on the AC finished,

Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Now it only takes months to image the night

sky. The Cerro Pachón ridge in north-central Chile

will soon host the new 8.4-metre

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

at the newly named Vera C Rubin

Observatory, which is capable

of surveying the entire southern

hemisphere sky in just three days.

Using micrometers (above),

measurers catalogued

up to 1000 stars on each

glass plate. The southern

hemisphere’s circumpolar

star chart (above right) was

largely created through

the observatories in

Sydney (shown in blue) and

Melbourne (green).

The Astrographic Catalogue aimed to record the
position of all the stars, and the Carte sought to be
the most detailed photographic chart of the heavens
COLLECTION: MUSEUM OF APPLIED ARTS AND SCIENCES. PHOTOGRAPHER CHRIS BROTHERS

STATE RECORDS AUTHORITY NEW SOUTH WALES

Issue 86 COSMOS – 37

ASTROGRAPHIC CATALOGUE