Personal Story

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue37 1–28 February 2023

I grew up in the southern Sydney suburb of Oatley, but havejust moved to Canberra to work on radio polarimetry, cosmic magnetism, radio galaxies, and galaxy groups. Before that, I spent three years in New Mexico, USA, working for the NRAO as a Jansky Fellow, and the three years before that as a Bolton Fellow in Perth. 

I’ve been captivated by astronomy ever since I, or my family, can remember. My parents had a copy of “The New Challenge of The Stars” by Patrick Moore, and say that I thumbed through it obsessively as a kid. In primary school, I was enthralled by the big numbers that astronomy threw up — the 10 trillion km in a light year, or the pressures and temperatures at the centre of the Sun, for example. I’d think over these numbers for hours and days, trying to get my head around them. Fast-forward a few years, and it was Kip Thorne’s “Black Holes & Time Warps” and “Stephen Hawking’s Universe” that I was trying to understand, while buying every possible issue of “Sky & Telescope” and “Astronomy” that I could lay my hands on. 

At this stage I was an avid amateur astronomer, but it really didn’t occur to me that I could be a research scientist. I was the first person in my family to attend university, and so having completed a bachelor’s degree, it seemed like the logical next step was to get a “proper” job. And I did — working at CSIRO on instrumentation for the mining and minerals industry. I loved getting my hands dirty on instrumentation and gauges in the field, and hanging out with miners from around the world, and working on things that produced direct and measurable benefits to society. I got to visit many incredible places around the world to boot. But after five years of this, I had had enough, and I finally knew what I really wanted to do: become a research astronomer. So I went back to the University of Sydney and completed honours part time over two years, while I continued working full time for CSIRO. It was a brutal workload, and slightly strange — I’d be solving problems for Quantum Mechanics assignments whilst getting sprayed by slurry in 45 degree C heat next to cacophonously loud ore crushers at mineral processing plants. I got the result I wanted though, and I went on to do my PhD, and from there to my research positions in Perth, New Mexico, and now here.

So I guess I’m a bit of an astronomy tragic now — it’s my day job, but whenever I get a spare minute at night, I’ll wheel out my scopes for a look. There are loads of other things I love doing as well: surfing (or anything around the ocean, really), snowboarding, mountain biking, camping, sailing, gaming. Canberra provides pretty good access to all of this, but I don’t have that much time for it — I’m the father of two girls aged 5 and 1. They keep me on my toes, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Recently, my older daughter has begun to show a strong interest in all things space, and if my scope is out at the start of the night, she’ll be out there with me. And so, I suppose, I’ve passed on the astronomy bug.

Craig Anderson