Pic 1) Jenny, my wife, and John Wilson (cryogenics engineer for CSIRO) on the reflective surface of Antenna #6 of the Compact Array just outside of Narrabri NSW.
2) Antennae 5 & 4.
3) Astronomer on duty, Prof. Ron Ekers - utilising the array to expand existing knowledge on the structure of Centaurus-A in the UHF LS band at 2GHz (around 25cm wavelength). Current images of Centaurus-A are of the immediate core and two spiral arms. Ron's work will expand the scope of the image by a factor of 100. Ron allowed Jenny and I to be shown up inside one of the antennae by actually stopping his observing schedule to point #6 to zenith so we could climb inside. I'd like to personally thank Ron for this as it is a rare privilege given the expense of array time.
I'll be putting up a full article soon - with several dozen photos inside the control room, electronics and cryogenics labs as well as up inside the antennae themselves.
When I went to the ATCA I was amazed at the accuracy of those big dishes. Arcsec accuracy with a 20 tonne dish.
I liked the fact that the cabling to each dish is temperature controlled to maintain a constant cable length so the correlator has 1 less variable to deal with.
Did you get a chance to have a look at SUSI? the optical interferometer on the same campus. It has an amazing optical bench underground.
Looking forward to the pics.
