NEW OBSERVATORY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20507, 18 March 1941, Page 3

NEW OBSERVATORY

MODERN INSTRUMENTS From the crude iron shed in Wellington which has been their headquarters for 17 years, Carter Observatory astronomers will shortly shift into the finest observatory in the Dominion, and one of the best of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. The new building, splendidly situated on a hilltop site near the cable car terminus at Kelburn, close by the Dominion Observatory, is fast nearing completion. There will be two telescopes in the new observatory. Underneath the dome, the framework of which is now in place will be the 9in. refracting telescope from the old City Observatory, the instrument which the Carter astronomers have used for many years.

The other will be a 20in. reflecting telescope presented by Victoria University College. It will be the largest-diameter telescope in New Zealand. While it can be arranged in such a way that the observer gazes directly upward, as in the ordinary telescope, in ordinary usage he will gaze downward into it. It will resemble to some extent, on a small scale, the great 200 in. reflecting telescope at present being installed at Mount Wilson Observatory, United States of America.

With these two powerful telescopes the Carter astronomers will be able to peer millions of miles through the darkness of space and examine and photograph stars so remote that they cannot be discerned with the unaided eye and that their light takes years to penetrate to the earth.