The Creation of the Anglo-Australian Observatory

An important 1990 history of the Anglo-Australian Telescope, which provides facilities for research in optical astronomy for scientists from Britain and Australia.

S. C. B. Gascoigne (Author), K. M. Proust (Author), M. O. Robins (Author), Paul J. Wild (Foreword by), Sir Robert Wison (With)

9780521353960, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 November 1990

316 pages
24.7 x 17.4 x 2 cm, 0.808 kg

"... will be of interest to those who worked to create, and who have worked at the observatory. It will also doubtless provide policy makers and future historians with material and pointers..." Science

This 1990 book is the official history of the Anglo-Australian Telescope which started to be built at Coonabarabran in New South Wales in 1968 and came into operation in 1974. The telescope is part of the Anglo-Australian Observatory which provides facilities for research in optical astronomy for scientists from Britain and Australia. The authors of this book were all involved in different capacities throughout the development of the telescope. As such it gives a detailed and personal record of the scientific, administrative and political developments from the moment negotiations began to the present day. The AAT has been, and continues to be, an outstanding success and can lay claim to being the best instrumented telescope in the world, with a very wide capability and high sensitivity. This is a unique and important book.

Foreword
Preface
1. The scientific background
2. The technical background
3. The campaign for a large telescope: aspirations and realities
4. An Anglo-Australian agreement
5. Site, dome and building
6. Optics and tube
7. Mounting, drive and control
8. Telescope or observatory?
9. The beginnings of the observatory
10. Commissioning
11. The UK Schmidt telescope at Siding Spring Observatory
12. Some achievements of the AAT
13. Political winds of change
14. Towards the next century
Appendices.

Subject Areas: Astronomical observation: observatories, equipment & methods [PGG]