An Engineer Becomes Astronomer

Mills, B. Y.

doi:10.1146/annurev.astro.44.051905.092522

Cited by 19 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Eventually, it was shown that the great majority of the Cambridge sources were fictitious, the result of an instrumental effect known as 'confusion'. Frater et al (2013Frater et al ( , 2017, Mills (2006) and . Initially there were three identical radio telescopes at this site: simple broadside arrays positioned along an E-W line, and mounted so they could be tilted about their E-W horizontal axes (Fig.…”

Section: Badgery's Creekmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frontier Life at the Field Stations

Orchiston

Robertson

Sullivan

2021

Golden Years of Australian Radio Astronomy

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Between October 1945 and March 1946 Radiophysics staff took advantage of the facilities at radar stations located at Collaroy Plateau and Dover Heights in suburban Sydney to follow up the British and New Zealand solar observations mentioned earlier, and this effectively marked the launch of radio astronomy in Australia. The equipment used at these field stations included radar antennas connected to 200 MHz receivers. In 1947 Ruby Payne-Scott (1912–1981) described the Royal Australian Air Force Radar 54 antenna at Collaroy as a

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Section: Badgery's Creekmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frontier Life at the Field Stations

Orchiston

Robertson

Sullivan

2021

Golden Years of Australian Radio Astronomy

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“…He did not have to look far. In May 1960 the offer of a position came from charismatic Canadian-born Harry Messel in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, virtually next door to the RP Lab (Mills, 2006;Frater et al, 2017: Chapter 3). After his appointment as Head of the School, Messel had begun a vigorous campaign to recruit new staff with the aim of transforming what was then a scientifically moribund department into a research centre of world class.…”

Section: Changing Of the Guardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where did it all Lead?

Orchiston

Robertson

Sullivan

2021

Golden Years of Australian Radio Astronomy

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At the end of World War II it would have been impossible to have foreseen the rapid growth of radio astronomy at the Radiophysics Lab. In the space of about five years radio astronomy not only became the dominant research program, but the RP group was easily the largest and most generously funded in the world. The two main rivals to Radiophysics were the Jodrell Bank group at the University of Manchester led by Bernard Lovell and the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University led by Martin Ryle. However, both these English groups were relatively small sections within their University’s physics departments and, with the post-war austerity in England, both groups operated on shoestring budgets. Around 1950, the combined budgets of the Jodrell Bank and Cambridge groups were only a small fraction of the RP radio astronomy budget (see e.g. Robertson, 1992: 131; Sullivan, 2009: 153).

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“…An interferometer is a filter of the information in the wavefront. In 1949 Pawsey suggested that Bernie Mills investigate the newly discovered discrete radio sources, but not by using low elevation observations with the cliff interferometer: "The future lay with the use of horizontal baselines" (Mills 2006). Mills' first interferometer at Badgerys Creek spaced 3 bedstead elements at a short and a long separation.…”

Section: Early Interferometersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The structure of radio sources - the Molonglo papers

McAdam¹

2012

Proceedings of Resolving the Sky - Radio Interferometry: Past, Present and Future — PoS(RTS2012)

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The Molonglo Cross Radio Telescope was the last of three remarkable interferometers built by Bernard Mills. Built between 1961 and 1967, it improved both resolution and sensitivity by an order of magnitude over the Fleurs Mills Cross and all contemporary parabolic telescopes. In its operation over 11 years to 1978 it made definitive surveys of both galactic and extragalactic sources in the Southern sky. Richard Schilizzi, whose career was celebrated at this conference, began his radio astronomy at Sydney University in 1967, the year that the Molonglo Cross telescope made its first pencil beam observations. This paper describes the history of the Cross telescopes, and the research by the Sydney group up to the departure of Richard to Caltech in 1973 and the dismantling of the Cross in 1978.

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An Engineer Becomes Astronomer

Cited by 19 publications

References 24 publications

Frontier Life at the Field Stations

Frontier Life at the Field Stations

Where did it all Lead?

The structure of radio sources - the Molonglo papers

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