RSAA News of the Month: February 2004
One Year Later
An Open Letter from the Director
31 January 2004
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
A year has passed since the devastating firestorm swept over Mount Stromlo and the suburbs of Canberra,
destroying much of our observatory and over 500 homes.
Since 11 February 2003, most of the Stromlo staff have been working
back up on the mountain, in conditions that look much the same as when
the firestorm swept through. Burnt trees have been felled in and
near the working areas on Mt Stromlo, but demolition of destroyed
buildings and building of permanent structures is yet to commence.
The complexity and legalities surrounding the reconstruction of the
observatory, a national heritage-listed site, together with funding
uncertainties have slowed rebuilding the physical plant. The mountain
is still closed to the public. In other arenas, however, the
Stromlo phoenix has begun to rise.
A year after the fire, demolition and rebuilding is yet to
commence. The ruins are being colonized by local wildlife.
Some funding for the reconstruction of Stromlo has been provided by
the Commonwealth Government of Australia (7.3M AU$), and limited,
partial payments against the large insurance claim, still in the
process of being finalized.
Three temporary demountables now provide office space for technical
and administrative staff on the mountain; a fourth provides housing
accommodation for PhD students whose homes were destroyed during the
fire. A large shed, known affectionately as "The Barn"
serves as a temporary workshop.
Burnt pine trees have been cleared from the observatory and logged or
chipped.
Native trees and shrubs are recovering. Surrounding
forest is being cleared.
Both on-site and from the city, Stromlo
is looking barer every day.
Consultants have been brought on board to present plans for a new
Advanced Instrumentation and Technology Centre, a reconstructed
Administration block, a new wide-field imaging telescope (The
SkyMapper, likely to be placed at Siding Spring), and a possible
Phoenix spectrographic telescope for Mount Stromlo. External
assistance was also sought to provide advice in landscaping, in
writing the Conservation Management Plan, now submitted to the Australian Heritage Commission, and
to direct the reconstruction process.
The Near-infrared
Integral Field Spectrograph, NIFS, destined for
the Gemini
North telescope before it was tragically destroyed in the fire, is
now being rebuilt with the assistance of Canberra-based Auspace, Ltd. The Australian National University made
an immediate decision to fund the rebuild of NIFS, far in advance of
any indication of insurance returns. NIFS II has successfully
undergone one cooldown in the Auspace lab, and we are currently
expecting a December 2004 completion. A second Gemini instrument, the
Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager (GSAOI),
passed its critical design review ahead of schedule, and has just
finished a successful vacuum test. We expect no delays in the delivery
of GSAOI to Gemini
South.
Temporary buildings house the electronic, mechanical and design
workshop staff.
New machine tools have been delivered and
installed in the Barn.
Inside the Barn the GSAOI casing,
cryogenics and instrument mount have been assembled and tested for
vacuum-tightness.
Working with data already in hand, or taken with Siding Spring, AAO, ATNF, and Gemini telescopes, our
staff and students continue to conduct news-making astronomical
research, winning prizes here in Australia and abroad. Some of our
colleagues overseas have offered telescope time to our PhD students to
allow timely completion of their theses; for this we are extremely
grateful. We are also indebted to those of our colleagues who have
made contributions to a growing, streamlined library (all of the old
collection was lost in the fire), in particular to those publishers
that donated volumes and the coordinating efforts of the US National Optical Astronomy
Observatory and the American
Astronomical Society in organizing North American contributions in
a large (1360 kg) shipment of books that has just arrived.
In closing, in case there could be any doubt, rest assured dear
friends that the spirit of Stromlo and its staff remains high and
dedicated to rebuilding an institution that will carry astronomy
forward into the next 80 years, as it has for the past eight
decades.
Sincerely,
Penny D. Sackett
Director
Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and
Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories
We are back and are determined to rebuild.
Many of the images were taken with Stromlo's new Nikon digital
cameras, donated by Maxwell
Optical Industries as their sponsorship of our rebuilding program.
Staff image by Bob Cooper; Spider and "bare mountain" images
by Kim Rawlings.
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