Through Adversity to the Stars: 100 Years of Mount Stromlo Observatory

In 1905, a research student named Geoffrey Duffield from Adelaide, South Australia, attended a meeting of the International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research in Oxford, England. It was here that he had the idea to establish a solar observatory in Australia. 

After years of lobbying, in January 1910 a board of experts was established to advise on potential sites for a new observatory. A site at Mount Stromlo in the southwest of what was to become the Australian Capital Territory was chosen for testing and a very simple observatory building was constructed to house the Oddie Telescope there in 1911. 

Despite the Federal Government’s commitment in principle in 1914 to establish a Commonwealth Observatory, it was not until April 1923 that the government finally committed funds, with Walter Duffield officially appointed inaugural director on 1 January 1924. 

It wasn’t until December 1926 that the main Observatory building, and some staff cottages were completed, with observational equipment used by Duffield at a temporary observatory within Hotel Canberra transported to Stromlo by horse and cart.

Since then, Mount Stromlo Observatory and its sister observatory at Siding Spring, have been home to some of the most talented researchers in astronomy and astrophysics in the world, and the work undertaken there has had an enormous impact on our understanding of the universe. 

'Through Adversity to the Stars: 100 Years of Mount Stromlo Observatory' celebrates 100 years of groundbreaking research featuring archival photographs, publications, posters, drawings and papers held in the University Archives.

Key resources used in researching this exhibition were 'Mount Stromlo Observatory: From Bush Observatory to the Nobel Prize' by Ragbir Bathal, Ralph Sutherland and Harvey Butcher, and 'Stromlo: An Australian Observatory' by Tom Frame and Don Faulkner. These books offer a comprehensive history of the Observatory and we gratefully acknowledge the work of the authors.