Melbourne Observatory (1863 - 1944)

Summary

The Melbourne Observatory was established in 1863 with the merger of the Williamstown and Flagstaff Observatories in Kings Domain, South Yarra, close to the centre of Melbourne, under the Directorship of R. L. J. Ellery. Georg Neumayer continued his magnetic and meteorological observations, begun at Flagstaff, at the new site until his return to Germany in 1864. With the Acquisition in 1868 of a 48-inch reflector, called the Great Melbourne Telescope, the Observatory became the best equipped of the Australian colonial observatories. The work of the Observatory included observations for the Astrographic Catalogue, the provision of meteorological information, and maintenance of the time signal. Meteorological work was subsumed by the newly-established Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology in 1908, and the time service was transferred to the Commonwealth Observatory at Mount Stromlo, A.C.T., in 1944. By the 1890s, with increasing electrification and street lighting in central Melbourne, astronomical research became progressively more difficult. The Observatory closed in 1944.

Related entries

Timeline

 1853 - 1863 Williamstown Observatory
 1858 - 1863 Flagstaff Observatory for Geophysics, Magnetism and Nautical Sciences
       1863 - 1944 Melbourne Observatory

Published resources

Books

• Gillespie, Richard, The Great Melbourne Telescope (Melbourne: Museum Victoria Publishing, 2011), 192 pp. Details

Book Sections

• Gascoigne, S. C. B., 'Ellery, Robert Lewis John (1827-1908), astronomer and public servant' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 4: 1851 - 1890 D-J, Douglas Pike, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972), pp. 135-137. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A040137b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

• Andropoulos, J.; Clark, B.; and Orchiston, W., 'Melbourne Observatory and the genesis of astrophysics in Australia', AAO newsletter, 190 (2006), 18-20. Details
• Baracchi, P., 'Spectra of southern stars observed at the Melbourne Observatory with the MacLean direct-vision spectroscope attached to the southern equatorial', Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 50 (1889), 66-71. Details
• Clark, B. A. J.; and Orchiston, W., 'The Melbourne Observatory Dallmeyer photoheliograph and the 1874 transit of Venus', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 7 (2004), 44-9. Details
• Clark, B.A.J.; and Orchiston, Wayne, 'The Melbourne Observatory Dallmeyer Photoheliograph and the 1874 Transit of Venus', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 7 (1) (2004), 44-49. Details
• Clark, Barry A. J., 'Influences of German science and scientists on Melbourne Observatory', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 127 (1) (2015), 43-58, https://doi.org/10.1071/RS15004. Details
• Ellery, R., 'Preliminary spectroscopic survey of southern stars, made at Melbourne Observatory with a MacLean direct-vision spectroscope on the 8-inch equatorial', Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 49 (1889), 439-45. Details
• Gascoigne, S. C. B., 'Robert LJ. Ellery, His Life and Times', Proceedings of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 10 (1992), 170-176. Details
• Gascoigne, S. C. B., 'The Great Melbourne Telescope and Other 19th Century Reflectors', Historical Records of Australian Science, 10 (3) (1995), 223-245. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR9951030223. Details
• Gascoigne, S. C. B., 'The Great Melbourne Telescope and Other 19th Century Reflectors', Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 37 (1996), 101-128. Details
• Gillespie, Richard, 'Georg Neumayer and Melbourne Observatory: an Institutional Legacy', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 123 (2011), 19-26. Details
• Moorhead, Simon, 'The Victorian time signal service', Australian journal of telecommunications and the digital economy, 2 (4) (2014), 64.1-64.10, https://doi.org/10.7790/ajtde.v2n4.64. Details
• Perdrix, J. L., 'The Melbourne Observatory. Presidential Address', The Journal of the Astronomical Society of Victoria (1961), 181-186. Details
• Perdrix, John, 'The Last Great Speculum: the 48-inch Great Melbourne Telescope', Australian Journal of Astronomy, 4 (3) (1992), 149-163. Details
• Ross, C. Stuart, 'Our Observatory: the story of its establishment', Victorian historical magazine, 6 (4) (1918), 134-44. Details
• Stevenson, Toner, 'Melbourne Observatory's astrographic women: star measurers and computers', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 26 (2) (2023), 325-38. https://doi.org/10.3724/SP.J.1440-2807.2023.06.28. Details
• Warner, B., 'The Large Southern Telescope: Cape or Melbourne?', Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 23 (1982), 505-514. Details

Theses

• Andropoulos, Jenny Ioanna, 'Astronomical observations of Melbourne Observatory', PhD thesis, James Cook University, 2014, 677 & 144 pp. Details
• Cohn, Helen M., 'Some Foundations of Science in Victoria in the Decade After Separation', MA thesis, University of Melbourne, 1990. Details
• Stevenson, T., 'Measuring the stars and observing the less visible: Australia's participation in the Astrographic Catalogue and Carte du Ciel', Thesis, University of Sydney, 2015, 381 pp. Details

See also

• Baldwin, J., 'Comet observations made in 1914 and 1915 at the Melbourne Observatory', Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 77 (1917), 474-7. Details
• Holland, Julian, 'Robert Lewis John Ellery, 1827-1908' in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Details
• Orchiston, Wayne; Clark, Barry A. J.; Frew, David; and Andropoulos, Jenny, 'The development of astronomy and the foundation of astrophysics in Australia' in The emergence of astrophysics in Asia: opening a new window on the Universe, Nakamura, T.; and Orchiston, W., eds (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2017), pp. 395-452. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-319-62082-4_17.pdf. Details
• Perdrix, J. L., 'Baracchi, Pietro Paolo Giovanni Ernesto (1851-1926), astronomer' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 7: 1891 - 1939 A-Ch, Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle, eds (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1979), pp. 166-167. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A070169b.htm. Details