SSO Director's Update
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue67 1–31 October 2025
Once again, the Saturday of the October Long Weekend saw the Open Day at Siding Spring Observatory. Over 1,100 people had a good look around the observatory under perfect blue skies and listened to many talks by students and staff in the shady lecture room. In the evening, a further 200 people attended the Bok Lecture in the park, where flocks of Kookaburras timed their laughter with the presenter’s answers during the Q&A session. Almost everyone stayed on for a couple of hours of stargazing with a few large portable telescopes. A similar size crowd attended the Science in the Pub session the night before in the Coona Golf Club. The audience had travelled from all over Australia to grill the panel of astronomers with smart questions.
The new mural at the SSO Exploratory was finished in time just three days before Open Day and is a fascinating sight. Painted in bright colours by Digital Artist Carl Knox (OzGrav) from Melbourne, it weaves together traditional stories of the creation of the world with the modern research into the creation of stars and galaxies carried out at SSO. The rainbow serpent emanates from a green lake and makes the land, represented by the ridge line of the Warrumbungles, and the water, represented by the Castlereagh River that begins in the Warrumbungle National Park. While the rainbows represent spectroscopy as the principal research tool of optical astronomy, the serpent slithers between the Pleiades and the Pillars of Creation, whilst seeing the world through glowing eyes, which at close sight, are revealed to be accreting black holes.
Behind the scenes, one of the valuable services that the technical staff provide to SSO and observatories further afield is giving their mirrors a fresh coating of aluminium. This month, KMTNet's 1.6m primary mirror, the third largest at SSO, was restored to high efficiency. Arriving at the AAT aluminising chamber with a reflectivity of near 50%, the skilled work of SSO staff meant it returned home with measurements of 90%, clearly ready to support a new multi-object spectrograph to be commissioned in a few months.
Christian Wolf
Image: The colourful new mural at the SSO Exploratory tells both the traditional story of creation and the modern story of research into the creation of stars and galaxies. Photo: Carl Knox
