From Wallal, in Australia’s far north-west, to Goondiwindi, near the New South Wales-Queensland border, local and international scientists watched the sun and waited.
A total solar eclipse was due on 21 September 1922. An eclipse always held scientific interest, but this one offered the chance to confirm one of the most revolutionary theories in science. Albert [...]
discontents
working for the triumph of content over form, ideas over control, people over systems
Commonwealth Solar Observatory
Looking at the sun
Stromlo: an Australian observatory
Few institutional histories could boast such a dramatic conclusion as Stromlo: an Australian observatory. The manuscript was substantially complete when a savage firestorm swept through the pine plantations flanking Mount Stromlo, destroying all the major telescopes and many of the observatory’s buildings. Among the losses was the Oddie Dome, built in 1911 to test the [...]
A wartime observatory observed
Ben Gascoigne, a young New Zealand physicist, stepped off the train at Canberra station. It was August 1941. A tall, good-looking man strode across the platform to greet him.
‘Woolley’ he said, offering his hand, ‘Do you play bridge?’.
That evening Ben Gascoigne found himself seated at a bridge table in Woolley’s residence at the Commonwealth Solar [...]
