The IAU Historic Radio Astronomy Working Group. I: progress report (original) (raw)

2004

This was a joint initiative of Commissions 40 (Radio Astronomy) and 41 (History of Astronomy), and as such the new WG comes under the umbrella of both Commissions and Divisions X and XII. Coincident with the formation of the WG at the General Assembly were 1.5 days of meetings about the history of radio astronomy, organised jointly by Commissions 40 and 41. Given Australia’s pioneering efforts in international radio astronomy, it was only natural that such sessions should form part of the program at the Sydney GA, and it was pleasing to see that they drew capacity audiences. Science Meeting 2, on “The Early Development of Australian Radio Astronomy”, ran all day on July 21, and attracted the following oral and poster papers:

The Early Development of New Zealand Radio Astronomy

The Emergence of Astrophysics in Asia, 2017

Between 1945 and 1950 New Zealand and New Zealand-based scientists hosted or initiated no fewer than five different radio astronomy projects, during the formative years of international radio astronomy. Four of these focused on solar radio emission, while the fifth was related to discrete sources (which, initially, were known as ‘radio stars’). One of the solar projects involved the independent discovery of solar radio emission; another project resulted in one of the world’s first graduate theses on solar radio astronomy; and a third solar project saw the publication of a paper in Nature, the first by a New Zealand astronomer. The sole non-solar project was mounted by two scientists from the Australian CSIR’s Division of Radiophyiscs, who successfully used observations made in New Zealand to identify optical correlates for three different ‘radio stars’, and show that they were in no way associated with stars (indicating that the term was a misnomer).

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