| 9th of April 2021 |
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| Badgery's Creek |
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Badgery's Creek was the site of an early field station for CSIRO's
Division of Radiophysics. This field station was 50 km
west–south–west of central Sydney on a CSIRO cattle research station,
and was founded by Bernie Mills at the end of 1949 so that he could
study discrete sources at 100 MHz, free from the electrical
interference that had plagued him previously at Potts Hill. The image
above shows one of three broadside antennas erected at the Badgery's
Creek site in late 1949. This 3-element interferometer operated at 100
MHz and two spacings of 60m (20 lambda) and 270m (90 lambda), and in
1950-1952 was used to investigate the accurate positions of discrete
sources.
In a case of "back to the future", Badgery's Creek will be
the location of the
new CSIRO site to be built at the Aerotropolis.
(The image is also another illustration of the strange attraction of radiotelescopes to animals! Previous ADAPs have depicted cattle grazing at Tidbinbilla, a camel at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, kangaroos, emus, wild boar, and a bungarra (or sand monitor), amongst others, at telescope sites.) A history of the Badgery's Creek field station, and other Radiophysics sites, is given in "Golden Years of Australian Radio Astronomy: An Illustrated History" by Orchiston, Robertson & Sullivan, to be published by Springer this year. |