A New Observatory - The Establishment of Siding Spring
When the Commonwealth Solar Observatory first opened at Mount Stromlo, Canberra was in its infancy and had a population of scarcely 5,000 people. A lot had changed by the 1960s and the once relatively unpopulated area surrounding Stromlo was now producing a level of light pollution that presented challenges for an observatory. Consequently, in 1960 Director Bart Bok gained support from the Federal Government to undertake site testing for an additional observatory site, with Mount Bingar, just north of Griffith in the central west of New South Wales and Siding Spring just outside Coonabarabran in northwest New South Wales chosen as the sites with the most potential. Ultimately, although Bok favoured Mount Bingar, most of his team favoured Siding Spring and on 12 May 1962 ANU Vice Chancellor Leonard Huxley selected the latter and work commenced to establish a new world-class observatory.
The first telescope established at Siding Spring was the 40-inch Boller & Chivens Telescope, which was designed for photography and photoelectric work. The first images were taken by Ben Gascoigne on 12 February 1964. The telescope was also used by Bart and Priscilla Bok to research the structure of the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds. The following year, a 16-inch Boller & Chivens Telescope was established at Siding Spring, with a 24-inch Boller & Chivens Telescope commissioned in 1966. This telescope was used by Director Don Matthewson to collect the most accurate polarization ever obtained and subsequently construct the first consistent magnetic field chart of the local arm of the Milky Way (ANU Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, n.d.).
The stand-out at Siding Spring Observatory was to be a new 3.8m telescope known as the Anglo-Australian Telescope. This was a joint venture of the Australian and British Governments. Debates, arguments and delays meant it was not until 1974 that it officially opened, and it was June 1975 before it was in regular use, several years after Bart Bok and wife Priscilla had left Stromlo to move to the University of Arizona.
In the 1980s, a 2.3m telescope known as the Advanced Technology Telescope (AAT) was established at Siding Spring and continues to provide students from ANU and other universities with hands-on experience of observing with a large optical astronomical telescope. In 1982, the Uppsala Telescope, built in 1956 at the Uppsala Observatory in Sweden and operating out of Mount Stromlo Observatory from 1957, was relocated to Siding Spring and used for photographic studies of the Milky Way as well as discovery and imaging of asteroids and comets.
Other telescopes at Siding Spring Observatory include the SkyMapper, which began a unique digital survey of the southern sky in 2014, and several telescopes operated by other institutions including the Faulkes Telescope South operated by the Las Cumbres Observatory and Solaris Telescope operated by Poland’s Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Centre.
