FIRESTORMS that swept through Canberra last week have almost completely destroyed the Mount Stromlo Observatory.
Stromlo, which is just 10 kilometres from the city centre, is Australia鈥檚 second most important observatory, after the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales. All six telescopes, a major equipment workshop, an administration building and several houses were gutted. Fortunately the main office buildings containing computer databases survived.
鈥淭he speed of the fire was unbelievable,鈥� says Ian Chubb, vice chancellor of the Australian National University in Canberra, which runs Stromlo. 鈥淭here are small trees that look like they were bent as if they were in a gale, and simultaneously burnt. The aluminium domes on top of the telescopes have all melted.鈥�
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鈥淢any astronomers have invested their professional lives in the telescopes 鈥� it鈥檚 going to be devastating,鈥� adds Brian Boyle, director of the Anglo-Australian Observatory at Siding Spring. 鈥淚t will mean the termination of a number of major projects, including a digital survey of the southern hemisphere.鈥� Surveys of the southern sky are important, not least because they give a better view of the centre of our galaxy. The survey was in only its second week when the fire struck.
The fires also incinerated a key piece of equipment that had been built at Stromlo for the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, and was in the final stages of testing. The $5 million 鈥渋maging spectrograph鈥� would have provided data about how galaxies formed in the early Universe. And the workshop鈥檚 destruction could jeopardise a contract to build a $6.3 million camera for the Gemini telescope in Chile.
The fires also reached the fence of NASA鈥橲 Deep Space Network facility, 40 kilometres away at Tidbinbilla, but were held off by local rural fire services and DSN staff. Nonetheless, the station, one of only three deep-space tracking stations around the world, was forced off-line for four hours.
The fires were Australia鈥檚 worst in several decades, and claimed four lives and over 400 homes in the Canberra region, although all 80 observatory staff and their families survived.