Fundraising and promotion
| Significance has been the impetus for fundraising for the preservation of the Great Melbourne Telescope. |
Returning an item, advocating for funding
In November 2008, parts of the Great Melbourne Telescope (GMT), which had been extensively damaged when the Canberra bushfires of January 2003 devastated Mount Stromlo Observatory, travelled back to their original home in Melbourne. The GMT had been installed at Melbourne Observatory in 1869, and was relocated to Mount Stromlo in 1944 when Melbourne Observatory closed. It has now been donated to Museum Victoria for restoration.
Part of the burnt-out 50-inch telescope at Mt Stromlo Observatory incorporating parts of the Great Melbourne Telescope, 2004
Photo: Nick Lomb. Reproduced courtesy of the Sydney Observatory, Powerhouse Museum
The 48-inch (122-cm) telescope was manufactured in Dublin by telescope makers Thomas and Howard Grubb, supervised by a committee of British astronomers. At the time of its installation in Melbourne in 1869, it was the world’s largest equatorially mounted telescope. It could be pointed at all directions in the sky. The GMT had drawbacks: its interchangeable metal mirrors were hard to polish and made the telescope awkward to use. Nor was it capable of long exposure photography. Its last scientific use in Melbourne was to photograph Halley’s Comet in 1910. It was useful at Mount Stromlo, Canberra, because parts were reused for the construction of a 50-inch telescope, notably the massive polar axis. This 50-inch telescope was upgraded and given a new lease of life in the 1980s for the MACHO project, an international effort to search for the dark matter that comprises most of the mass of the universe.
So the GMT’s significant life as a scientific instrument continued into the twenty-first century. It was still transmitting data when it was severely damaged in the bushfires. Subsequently, the recycled parts were taken back to Melbourne to be reunited with other parts of the telescope already at Museum Victoria in the hope that its significance will prompt the contribution of sufficient funds to rebuild it.
