Mt Stromlo Observatory: From Bush Observatory to the Nobel Prize

Front Cover
Csiro Publishing, Dec 2, 2013 - Nature - 344 pages
This book tells the story of the Mt Stromlo Observatory in Canberra which began with W.G. Duffield's idealism and vision in 1905. The Observatory began life as a government department, later becoming an optical munitions factory producing gun sights and telescopes during the Second World War, before changing its focus to astrophysics – the new astronomy. In the ensuing years programs were introduced to push the Observatory in new directions at the international frontiers of astronomy. The astronomers built new, better and larger telescopes to unravel the secrets of the universe. There were controversies, exciting new discoveries and new explanations of phenomena that had been discovered. The Observatory and its researchers have contributed to determining how old the universe is, participated in the largest survey of galaxies in the universe, and helped to show us that the universal expansion is accelerating – research that led to Brian Schmidt and his international team being awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. These and other major discoveries are detailed in this fascinating book about one of the great observatories in the world.
 

Contents

19241929
26
19301939
50
19401945
62
19461955
76
19561966
102
19661977
128
19771986
150
19861992
176
19932002
196
20022007
224
20072013
252
Directors of Mount Stromlo Observatory
310
Timeline of major events
311
Index
321
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