A NEW OBSERVATORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19626, 3 May 1927, Page 11

A NEW OBSERVATORY.

AFRICA'S GREAT TELESCOPE. STATION AT BLOEMFONTEIN. [from our own correspondent. ] CAPETOWN. Feb. 18. The pre-eminent suitability of South Africa as a field for astronomical survey, recently emphasised by the decision to establish tho great Lamont telescope at Bloemfontem, has once again been recognised. The Boyden station of the Harvard Observatory, at Arequipa, Peru, is now to be closed after having been in existence there for a third of a century and the installation is to be transferred to South Africa. TJioso in charge at Arequipa have been forced to the conclusion that opportunities offered in South America are vastly behind those available in South Africa. There are at present two st Harvard which are used to photograph the sky in the Northern Hemisphere each clear night and as a consequence the observatory possesses what is practically a continuous record of the skies for the past 30 years. The effort now is to secure similar data concerning the Southern Hemisphere. The telescope to be used will be of the reflecting type with a 60-inch reflector. This will be sent direct from Harvard and the instrument will bo the only one in use in South Africa. The staff of the new station at Bloemfontein is as yet uncertain, but it may be under the charge of the Greek astromoner, Paraskevopoulos, who has been in charge at Arequipa.