Sea-cliff interferometer and discrete radio sources
Interferómetro de acantilado y radiofuentes discretas
- Date
- 1946-1949 · confidence high
- Place
- Dover Heights, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Credited to
- Joseph Pawsey, Ruby Payne-Scott, John Bolton and Lindsay McCready (CSIR)
- People
- 👤 John Bolton1948–👤 Joseph Lade Pawsey1908–1962👤 Ruby Payne-Scott1912–1981
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
An antenna on a cliff that interfered the direct signal with the one reflected off the sea to locate radio sources. It made it possible to identify the first ones with visible objects: the Crab Nebula and the galaxies M87 and NGC 5128 (1949).
Payne-Scott was the first female radio astronomer and also discovered type III solar bursts.
What it led to
- Australian radio astronomy (Parkes, Mills Cross)
- the demonstration that radio sources are distant galaxies
- aperture synthesis