Sixty years in radio astronomy: a tribute to Bruce Slee

Bruce Slee is one of the pioneers of radio astronomy. After recording solar emission during World War II, he joined what was then the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research's Division of Radiophysics in Sydney, Australia, and went on to make important contributions to Solar System, Galactic and extra-galactic astronomy. Since his retirement, in 1989, he has continued his research as an Honorary Fellow of the Australia Telescope National Facility, Now in his early 80s, Bruce Slee is one of the few radio astronomy pioneers of the 1940s who is still actively contributing to astrophysics. This issue of the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (JAH2), and the two that will follow it, are a tribute to this quietly-spoken scientist and his remarkable 60-year involvement in radio astronomy

Recent Developments in Victorian Prehistory

A Conference on 'Aboriginal Man and Environment in Southeastern Victoria: Recent Developments in Victorian Prehistory was held at the University of Melbourne on 27-29 November, 1975. This paper is a summary of Conference papers, in the order in which they were presented

Archaeological Developments in the History Department at The University of Melbourne, 1975

This report summarizes archaeological developments that took place during 1975 within the History Department, the staff of which includes two archaeologists, Mr W. Culican (Reader; specialization: Middle East) and the author (Research Fellow; specialization: Oceanic prehistory and ethnohistory)

Ingenuity and initiative in Australian radio astronomy: the Dover Heights ‘hole-in-the-ground’ antenna

During the 1950s staff from the CSIRO's Division of Radiophysics based at the Dover Heights field station employed ingenuity and initiative in response to a lack of funding and support for a new radio telescope. In order to obtain the requisite aperture for the resolution sought they spent their own time excavating a 21.9-m parabolic depression in the sand at the field station, and when the viability of this prototype transit instrument was established its diameter was increased to 24.4 m, making this the largest radio telescope in Australia at the time. Operating at 400 MHz, this instrument was employed to map the galactic centre region and in a search for new discrete sources. It also was used to investigate polarization in the plane of the Galaxy, and in an unsuccessful search for the newly-proposed deuterium line. Today the Dover Heights "hole-in-the-ground" antenna lies buried beneath Rodney Reserve, and there is little at this public playing field to remind visitors of the important contributions made by this radio telescope, and others at this site, during the formative years of Australian radio astronomy

A New Archaeology-Ethnohistory Research Journal for The Pacific Area

The Artefact, fomerly the newsletter of the Archaeological Society of Victoria, is now a professional research journal specializing in the ethno-history and archaeology (prehistoric, historic, and ethno) of the Pacific region

Analysis of the New Moon Times on the Disk of the Astronomical Clock in Gdansk, Poland.

The calendar disk of the fifteenth century astronomical clock in the church of Saint Mary in Gdansk (Poland) contains a wealth of astronomical and calendrical data. We make a statistical analysis of the mean conjunction times of all the mean New Moons as represented on the disk for four Metonic 19-year cycles. We find that the conjunction times were generated using the Alfonsine value for the length of the synodic month and with a mean longitude correction from the Alfonsine meridian (Toledo in Spain) by 1 hour and 16 minutes. This indicates a location with a longitude of a little more than 19° east of Toledo but due to the uncertainty of the actual locations in longitude at the time it is not possible to point out a specific location. The method of calculating the conjunction times differs from other contemporary calendars and has considerably less quality than other contemporary conjunction lists

Peter Millman and the study of meteor spectra at Harvard University

During the 1930s meteor astronomy entered a new era when the Canadian astronomer, Peter Millman, began investigating the spectra of meteors for his post-graduate studies at Harvard University. Whilst experimenting with different lenses, prisms, shutters, photographic plates, and observational techniques, Millman constructed a number of different meteor spectrographs, and by conducting systematic photographic surveys between November 1931 and February 1933 almost tripled the number of meteor spectra known to exist. Through these efforts, in less than two years he was responsible for single-handedly launching a whole new field of meteor investigation

Chris Christiansen and the Chris Cross

The Chris Cross was the world's first crossed-grating interferometer, and was the brainchild of one of Australia's foremost radio astronomers, W.N. (Chris) Christiansen, from the CSIRO's Division of Radiophysics in Sydney. Inspired by the innovative and highly-successful E-W and N-S solar grating arrays that he constructed at Potts Hill (Sydney) in the early 1950s, Christiansen sited the Chris Cross at the Division’s Fleurs field station near Sydney, and from 1957 to 1988 it provided two-dimensional maps of solar radio emission at 1423 MHz. In 1960 an 18m parabolic antenna was installed adjacent to the Chris Cross array, and when used with the Chris Cross formed the Southern Hemisphere's first high-resolution compound interferometer. A survey of discrete radio sources was carried out with this radio telescope. The Division of Radiophysics handed the Fleurs field station over to the School of Engineering at the University of Sydney in 1963, and Christiansen and his colleagues from the Department of Electrical Engineering proceeded to develop the Chris Cross into the Fleurs Synthesis Telescope (FST) by adding six stand-alone 13.7m parabolic antennas. The FST was used for detailed studies of large radio galaxies, supernova remnants and emission nebu-lae. The FST was closed down in 1988, and antennas in the original Chris Cross array quickly began to deteriorate. A number of individual antennas in the central part of the array received a new lease of life in 1991 when they were refurbished by staff and students from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Western Sydney, but this only proved to be a temporary reprieve as even these aerials were bulldozed by the landowner in 2004, bringing to an untimely end one of the world's most remarkable radio telescopes

Residual Holocene populations in Bassiania: Aboriginal Man at Palana, Northern Flinders Island

The survey and excavation studies in parts of Bassiania examined Aboriginal occupation evidence, and carried out a variety of geological investigations. Further information was obtained in December 1977, when both authors made a short return trip to the area. This paper summarizes the initial results of the archaeological investigations; a fuller account is in preparation

Annual report of the Archaeological Society of Victoria, 1977

Activities of the Archaeological Society of Victoria