Mount Stromlo

One of the activities we recently had the opportunity to do as part of the Heritage Festival was a walking tour of Mount Stromlo Observatory.

From a distance it looks like a wonderful facility with beautiful views to the Brindabella Mountains. But in January 2003 much of the infrastructure was destroyed by a firestorm started by lightning strikes in those mountains.

The dome for the Uppsala-Schmidt telescope, built in 1955, was being used at the time of the firestorm as the headquarters for the Canberra Astronomical Society after the telescope was moved to Siding Spring due to increasing light pollution in Canberra. The building was too badly damaged and had to be demolished.

The Oddie Dome was built in 1911 to allow testing of the site for suitability for the observatory. It was the first building on the mountain, and indeed the first Commonwealth building in Canberra. It is awaiting structural stabilisation.

The Great Melbourne Dome housed a telescope purchased from the Melbourne Observatory in 1945. It was being used for the Skymapper project at the time of the firestorm.

The Yale-Columbia Telescope was moved from South Africa to Mt Stromlo in 1955 when increasing light pollution made its previous location unviable. The telescope was donated to Mt Stromlo in 1963. 

The 74 inch reflector was the largest telescope. It was completed in 1955 and originally required two people to operate it. The dome survived the firestorm but the interior was destroyed.

The Director's Residence was completed in 1928. Its first occupants were Professor Walter Geoffrey Duffield and his family. Professor Duffield had worked for many years to establish a solar observatory in Australia and was appointed the first director of the Commonwealth Solar Observatory in 1924. 

The building was gutted in the firestorm. The exterior has been restored and the building was opened to the public earlier this year.

The old administration building had two small domes for the Farnham Telescope and the Heliostat. Although most of the building was destroyed the Farnham Telescope survived, the only telescope to come through the firestorm intact. The building has since been restored.

The Visitors Centre, opened in 1996, survived the firestorm but never quite regained its old popularity and is empty at this time though there are plans to reopen it later this year.

Nearby is the Gwynvill Sundial Analemma. I tried it out, it works, very interesting! Standing on the appropriate spot on the figure eight casts your shadow on the rock with the current time on it.

On the day we visited, the view towards the mountains was of an approaching rainstorm. In the foreground are pine trees of the type that once grew in commercial plantations all over Mount Stromlo and helped shield the telescopes from the lights of the suburbs.

The work of Mount Stromlo is now done by telescopes located at Siding Spring but three small domes have been built on the site of the old workshops and host viewing nights for the public. Those workshops had been replacements for earlier workshops destroyed by a bushfire in the 1950's.

Administration, workshop and computer facilities remain at the Mount Stromlo site.