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The new Mount Stromlo will offer three telescopes for public access,
restored heritage buildings and improved research facilities.
Mount Stromlo Observatory, the oldest continuously operating research
observatory in Australia, lost five telescopes, heritage buildings,
workshops and houses in bushfires on January 18 this year.
Redevelopment plans strongly emphasise the heritage of the site,
including plans to restore the first Commonwealth Government building
built in the ACT, the heritage-listed 1911 23cm Oddie telescope, and
the 1924 heritage-listed Old Administration Building, designed by John
Smith Murdoch, the architect of Old Parliament House.
The Oddie Telescope will be restored for public use and the Old
Administration Building will house offices and an astronomy library.
The 1868 15cm Farnham telescope, which stood on the roof of the Old
Administration Building, miraculously escaped the fires, and will be
rehoused in a new dome, to make it available for regular public
viewing.
The 190cm telescope, built in 1953, was too badly damaged for
scientific restoration and will be replaced with the Phoenix Telescope
- a telescope of the same size, but using modern technologies to make
it vastly more powerful.
The 1868 130cm Great Melbourne Telescope, the largest in the world
when it was first built, was also damaged too badly for
restoration. The Skymapper Telescope, located at Siding Spring
Observatory but controllable from Mt Stromlo, will carry its work
forward.
ANU MEDIA OFFICE CONTACT: Tim Winkler (02) 6125 5001/0416 249 231
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