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View Full Version here: : Tassie radio 'scope pics - thankyou Grote Reber!


janoskiss
24-04-2012, 06:47 PM
Hi everyone,

I recently got back from a holiday in Tassie.

There quite by accident I discovered that the father of radio astronomy was an American-born Tasmanian Grote Reber. "For nearly a decade he was the world's only radio astronomer." (wikipedia)

Then I accidentally stumbled on the Mt Pleasant Observatory in Cambridge near Hobart. Here is a piccie of the main 26m dish and one more of the now decommissioned Vela dish that was an instrument built in 1981 solely for observing the Vela Pulsar - which it did for 20 years, 18 hours a day!

tonybarry
28-04-2012, 06:22 PM
This is an interesting coincidence.

At NACAA this year (Easter, Brisbane) the Perdrix address was about Grote Reber; his life and his work in radio astronomy. The fact that he was an amateur astronomer only adds to the surprise - he did groundbreaking research which laid the foundation for today's radio astronomy programs.

Regards,
Tony Barry