Location: Blandford Street, Collaroy Plateau, Sydney, 2098
Country: Gadigal
LGA: Northern Beaches
Region: Northern Sydney
Map: below
In October 1945, a couple of scientists – Joe Pawsey, Ruby Payne-Scott, and Lindsay McCready – from what was then known as the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR now CSIRO), modified a WWII military radar station at Collaroy Plateau, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and detected strong radio emissions coming from the Sun. This event has since been called the birth of Australian radio astronomy.
Signage in what is now known as Collaroy Plateau Park, or Vic Huxley Oval, commemorates this site’s astro-heritage, although nothing is left of the old radar station itself.
Gerrit L. Verschuur, 2007, p. 1, The Invisible Universe: The Story of Radio Astronomy (Second edition), Springer Science, New York.
Radio waves from space carry information about some of the most intriguing natural phenomena yet discovered by human beings. This is the bailiwick of radio astronomy. However, the cosmic radio whispers reaching the earth compete with the electrical din produced by TV, radio, FM, radar, satellite, and cell phone signals. Thus, the faint radio signals from space that memorialize the death of stars, or tell of awesome explosions triggered by black holes in galaxies well beyond sight, are nearly lost against the background of human-made static. Yet such radio waves contain the secrets of interstellar gas clouds and carry messages from remnants of the Big Bang that propelled our universe into existence.
CSIRO Australia Telescope National Array (ATNF) ‘Found: Original 1945 Records of Australian Radio Astronomy – Collaroy Observations‘
In July 2014, Miller Goss, Ron Ekers and Helen Sim found the original records of the first published Australian radio astronomy observations. These were obtained by Joseph L. Pawsey and Ruby Payne-Scott in early October 1945.The observations gave strong evidence of a hot million degree corona as well as frequent radio bursts.
These observations formed the basis for a number of pioneering publications: the 9 Feb 1946 Nature paper of Pawsey, Payne-Scott and McCready, the major publication of the initial Australian radio solar publications of McCready, Pawsey and Payne-Scott in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London in Aug 1947 and Pawsey’s presentation of the radio properties of the million degree corona in Nature on 2 Nov 1946
Contemporaneously with these publications, D.F. Martyn, Ginzburg and Shklovsky were all involved in independent theoretical studies of the properties of the solar corona. The back-to-back Martyn and Pawsey Nature papers were the first that described the radio properties of the hot corona, caused by free-free emission in the corona. The contents of this exciting discovery provides important clues to the thought processes of Pawsey and Payne-Scott as they attempted to decipher the complex, time variable radio emission of the sun at 200 MHz or a wavelength of 1.5 metre during the first few months of Australian radio astronomy observations. The division of the observed emission into “bursting” and “quiet” modes was challenging for the novice radio astronomers.
These records had been recognized by Paul Wild in 1968, who instructed the CSIRO Division of Radiophysics secretary to E.(“Taffy”) G. Bowen, Ms. Sally Atkinson, to submit these to the Australian Academy of Science. Wild characterized these documents as “of considerable historical interest” . Apparently the transmission of the documents was not done; a thorough search of the Australian Academy Library in August 2014 failed to locate them. The original papers were only found in Ms. Atkinson’s files after her death on 13 November 2012 in Sydney. We have also found images of the RAAF antenna (LW/AW RP radar aerial) in the collection of the Warringah Council. More >>
For more on European astronomy in Australia, see Graham, A. W., Kenyon, K. H., Bull, L. J., Lokuge Don, V. C., & Kuhlmann, K. (2021). History of Astronomy in Australia: Big-Impact Astronomy from World War II until the Lunar Landing (1945–1969). Galaxies, 9(2), 24.
For more about this historic astro-site, check out the following.
Collaroy Park, RAAF Radar Station >>
Collaroy Plateau makes history as the birthplace of radio astronomy
R.A.A.F. Radar Station (No.101/54), Collaroy Plateau >>
Csiropedia: CSIRO: Radar and the birth of radio astronomy in Australia at Collaroy Plateau
WM Goss, Claire Hooker, Ronald D Ekers, 2023, Serendipity: Sunspots at Collaroy, 1945–1946, in Joe Pawsey and the Founding of Australian Radio Astronomy (pp.169-184), Springer.
Joe Pawsey at Collaroy Plateau >>
Feature photo caption: “A COL (Chain Overseas Low [flying]) Mk.V 200 MHz radar at Collaroy Plateau in early 1946. This view is looking toward the east with the control room in the foreground. This radar was designed in Britain with the aerial and its tower built by the NSW Government railways. (Photo courtesy of Deidre and Jim Thorncraft, reproduced from Ted Dellit’s book The Royal Australian Air Force on Collaroy Plateau in the Second World War, 2000).” Courtesy of CSIRO. From https://csiropedia.csiro.au/radar-and-the-birth-of-radio-astronomy-in-australia-at-collaroy-plateau/
For more on European astronomy in Australia, see Graham, A. W., Kenyon, K. H., Bull, L. J., Lokuge Don, V. C., & Kuhlmann, K. (2021). History of Astronomy in Australia: Big-Impact Astronomy from World War II until the Lunar Landing (1945–1969). Galaxies, 9(2), 24. https://doi.org/10.3390/galaxies9020024
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Post published 5 December 2024. Last updated 11 June 2025.