Personal Stories

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue3 1–30 April 2020

Steven Lee

I have had an interest in astronomy since the age of 10 when I was shown the Sun, abundant with sunspots, as it was around sunspot maximum. The cyclic nature of sunspots and that you could observe them with simple equipment fascinated me. An encounter with Saturn through the eyepiece of another telescope a while later and I was hooked. Growing up during the space race and watching the broadcast of the first moon landing kept this fascination running. I made my first telescope, including the mirror, when I was 15 and became an avid sky gazer. But when it came time to find employment I ended up becoming a computer programmer in the days when few people had heard of computers let alone had one at home.

This proved to be a lucky career move as a while later there was a vacancy for telescope operators at the newly completed Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT). The AAT was the first large optical telescope to be fully computer controlled and having a background in computers as well as telescopes was a distinct advantage which secured me the position. Moving to the dark skies of Coonabarabran began a life long dual career of working at the AAT and being an amateur astronomer.

My job description is simple - I operate a telescope. I've done the same thing for 43 years. The environment in which I work, however, is ever changing and replete with new experiences and opportunities. I work with the most modern technology doing cutting-edge science. New instruments are being designed all the time. New technologies are being pressed into service. A continual stream of the best astronomers in the world pass through the doors, happy to discuss their work during the long nights while observing. Being there while discoveries were made, and helping to make them happen is reward in itself. A superb place to spend one's life. And as one wit pointed out, I got paid too.

I became involved with several astronomy projects over the years. An early one was searching for new supernovae with the UKST. When we bagged a 16th magnitude one we were told by the people at the IAU circulars that this was too faint and nobody would be able to do research on it. By the time the telex had come back with this rejection on it I had taken a spectrum with the AAT, stealing a few minutes twilight time before the 21st magnitude QSOs were visible. The policy on SN was changed after this and astronomers became more interested in the possibilities that distant SN offered.

Much more recently I've been involved with Oxford University on the Global Jet Watch (GJW) project which remotely monitors microquasars and other rapidly evolving objects such as novae, using an array of 5 telescopes around the world; and Macquarie University with the Huntsman project looking at low surface brightness features around galaxies. The GJW telescopes are (mostly) based at boarding schools and help interest school children in science and astronomy as an important sideline. I've had an asteroid named after me for my work at the AAT (number 46568), and in my spare time I discovered a comet (1999 H1).

While I've had a very long involvement with the people at the ANU, I've only recently become a staff member. With the restructuring of the financing of the AAO, the ANU took over management of the AAT from July 2018, thus offering a new lease of life to an aging telescope (and operator).