Anglo-Australian Observatory

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Anglo-Australian Telescope

Organization

AAO

Location

Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia

Coordinates

149° 03' 57.91" E, -31° 16' 37.34" S

Altitude

1164 m, 3819 ft

Weather

250 clear nights, 65% humidity

Telescopes
Anglo-Australian Telescope	3.9 m reflector
UK Schmidt Telescope	1.2 m reflector

The Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) is an optical astronomy observatory with its headquarters in suburban Sydney, Australia. It is jointly funded by the United Kingdom and Australian governments and operates the 3.9 metre Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) and 1.2 metre UK Schmidt Telescope (UKST) at Siding Spring Observatory, located near the town of Coonabarabran, Australia.

The observatory was constructed by Leighton Holdings and completed in 1971^[1].

In addition to operating the two telescopes, AAO staff carry out astronomical research, as well as design and build innovative astronomical instrumentation for the AAT, UKST, and other telescopes including the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, and the Japanese Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

The AAO has pioneered the use of optical fibers in astronomy, as a means for conducting light from many sources within the telescope's field of view into a spectrograph. The AAT's 2dF spectrograph can record spectra of up to 400 objects simultaneously over a 2° field (4 times the apparent diameter of the Full Moon) (Note: this instrument has recently been superseded by AAOmega; the major difference between the instruments is the placement of the spectrographs on the dome floor rather than having them mounted on the "top end"), while the UKST's 6dF spectrograph can record spectra of up to 150 objects simultaneously over a 6° field. The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) and 2dF Quasar Survey (2QZ) on the AAT have yielded redshifts for 245,000 galaxies and 23,000 quasars respectively, probing the large scale structure of the Universe and placing new limits on Big Bang cosmology.