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Yesterday's ADAP described an antenna on a lake -- today's image is of an antenna
that was located by the Potts Hill reservoirs in western Sydney
(and that was recently featured on the
CSIRO_ATNF twitter feed).
In 1948, this 4.9m x 5.5m (16-ft x 18-ft) ex-radar paraboloid,
that had originally been used for solar work at the short-lived
Georges Heights field station, was relocated to Potts Hill.
The original crude support was replaced by an equatorial mounting,
and this radio telescope was one of the principle instruments
at Potts Hills in the early days, operating at 200, 600 and 1200 MHz.
Following a cable to Pawsey in March 1951 from Frank Kerr, then visiting the USA,
Christiansen and Hindman embarked on a crash program to confirm
the detection of the 21-cm neutral hydrogen line made by Ewen and Purcell.
Within several weeks they had built a narrow-band receiver for the
telescope and made the first hydrogen line observations of the
southern sky.
More details are given in
this paper by Rod Davies
and
this ATNF News article by
Wendt, Orchiston, and Slee.
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