Description
Canberra, the little-known capital city of Australia, has a surprising number of excellent optical and radio telescopes scattered through the gentle hills that surround it. Many of these were cutting-edge in their time, but as the years have rolled on they have come to be seen as old and unfashionable, unable to do cutting edge science anymore, just liabilities to be decommissioned.As a heritage conservator I believe they have more to offer: they are surrounded by stories of scientific endeavour, political wrangling, the involvement of local communities and social change, and they embody a physical record of changing technologies and skills. But perhaps most importantly they offer a way for new generations to learn first-hand what a telescope does and how to keep it working well: how do you “tune” it? How do you battle the subtle interferences of noise and weather? How do you get up onto it safely to remove the birds’ nests, and keep the frogs out of the receiver boxes? And how do you get an observation from it that you can trust? This is not itself cutting-edge science, but these skills may be the start of cutting-edge scientists. So we looked for ways to make these older instruments into sources of community inspiration and education.
The first telescope we looked at was the Molonglo Radio Telescope, originally known as Mills Cross, about 45 minutes out of the centre of Canberra. With funding from the Heritage Near Me program implemented by the NSW Government Office of Heritage and Environment, staff and students from the University of Canberra worked to increase public access to and understanding of the telescope through development of educational programs to promote engagement with both its social and scientific heritage. Spoiler alert – community interest was high but logistical barriers were also high and we could not get the project over the line. We did, however, learn a lot, and we are currently using those learnings to have another go – this time with a 10 metre radio dish on the University of Canberra campus. This talk is about the possibilities for seeing old telescopes in new ways, and about the issues that make preservation of an older telescope a viable proposition.
| Period | 12 Jun 2024 |
|---|---|
| Held at | University of Warwick, United Kingdom |
| Degree of Recognition | International |