It’s ours, all ours

In what would probably be a rare bit of good news for Australian professional astronomers:

MORE than 35 years after Prince Charles opened Australia's biggest optical telescope - a joint venture between our two nations to explore the southern skies - we are bidding goodbye to the Brits.

From next month, the Anglo-Australian Observatory near the NSW town of Coonabarabran will become the Australian Astronomical Observatory.

Its director, Matthew Colless, said the decades of collaboration with Britain had led to many big discoveries about the universe, including a measurement of the matter it contains.

But 100 per cent ownership of the observatory's four-metre telescope, which is still ranked highly in the world, would open up new opportunities for research in the coming decade.

I’ve been there once in the late 1980’s, and I recall it as having a pretty good visitor centre. Somewhere in a drawer I probably have a photo, but here’s one from the web.