The Paul Wild Observatory, also known as the Narrabri Observatory and Culgoora Observatory,[1] is an astronomical research facility located about 24 km west of Narrabri, New South Wales, Australia.[2] It is the home of the Australia Telescope Compact Array, and the Culgoora Solar Observatory.
The site itself and the Australia Telescope Compact Array are run by Australia's science agency, the CSIRO.[1] The current Solar Observatory is run by the Space Weather Services section of Australia's Bureau of Meteorology.[3][4]
The site is named in honour of Australian radio astronomer Paul Wild, who headed the team that built the instrument that the site was established for – the Culgoora Radioheliograph, the world's first radioheliograph[5] – which ran from 1967 to 1984.[6]
The Australia Telescope Compact Array began operating at the site in 1988.[7]
The children's/teen's television adventure series Sky Trackers was filmed at the site in 1993,[17] with the antenna dishes of the Australia Telescope Compact Array being prominently featured.
In addition to the Paul Wild Observatory, there is a history of astronomical research at other sites in the Narrabri area. The Narrabri Stellar Intensity Interferometer (NSII), the predecessor of SUSI, was located about 10 km north of Narrabri.[18]
At a site south of Narrabri, near the Bohena Creek, Durham University ran gamma ray telescopes[19] from 1986 to 2000.[20] The Bohena Creek site had previously been used for Sydney University's Giant Air Shower Recorder (SUGAR) for the detection of cosmic rays.[19]
^"About SWS". Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology Space Weather Services. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
^ ab"Culgoora Observatory". Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology Space Weather Services. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
^Stewart, Ronald; Wendt, Harry; Orchiston, Wayne; Slee, Bruce (2011). "A Retrospective View of Australian Solar Radio Astronomy 1945-1960". In Orchiston, Wayne (ed.). Highlighting the History of Astronomy in the Asia-Pacific. Springer. p. 589. ISBN978-1-4419-8160-8.
^Yomoto, Kiyohumi (November 2005). "MAGDAS_Project". International Centre for Space Weather Science and Education Kyushu University. Archived from the original on 31 July 2007. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
^Watson, Fred; Couch, Warrick (December 2017). "Astronomy in Australia"(PDF). The Messenger (170). European Southern Observatory: 4. "While SUSI achieved an excellent track record in high-resolution optical astronomy, it eventually closed in the face of competition from ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) and other facilities."{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
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