Adelastro1
20-04-2012, 01:42 AM
This week I traveled to Woomera as part of a group from the Uni of Adelaide to witness and photograph the start of demolition of the Cangaroo II & III and BIGRAT high energy gamma ray telescopes (and CARROTS - not sure what that one is though!). The link below has some information about the Cangaroo telescopes that the University of Adelaide had major involvement in along with institutions in Japan. BIGRAT was used in the late 80's I understand and Cangaroo in the late 90's.
http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/astrophysics/cangaroo/
It's a shame they had to be demolished but the funding had finished and technology had moved on to better telescopes. From what I understand these telescopes were at the forefront of detecting high energy gamma ray sources. The Dept of Defence also wanted the site returned to 'original condition' so work is now proceeding to do this. A crane was used to pull apart the large components of the 10m telescopes and the dish weighed between 8 & 9 tons and the counterweight about 13 tons! I also did a timelapse video of one of the telescope's demolition.
Anyway it's the end of an era and hopefully the start of a new one!
http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/astrophysics/cangaroo/
It's a shame they had to be demolished but the funding had finished and technology had moved on to better telescopes. From what I understand these telescopes were at the forefront of detecting high energy gamma ray sources. The Dept of Defence also wanted the site returned to 'original condition' so work is now proceeding to do this. A crane was used to pull apart the large components of the 10m telescopes and the dish weighed between 8 & 9 tons and the counterweight about 13 tons! I also did a timelapse video of one of the telescope's demolition.
Anyway it's the end of an era and hopefully the start of a new one!