'The telescopes look like they are OK': fire at major observatory

By Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation

Australia's biggest astronomical observatory was burned in a bushfire near Coonabarabran in Western NSW overnight, threatening the largest optical telescope in the country.

All 18 staff were safely evacuated from the Siding Spring Observatory (SSO) in the Warrumbungle Mountains at around 4pm yesterday, according to a press release issued by the Australian National University, which operates the Observatory.

“An initial assessment indicates that five buildings have been severely affected or damaged, including the Lodge used to accommodate visiting researchers and a number of cottages and sheds. A fire has been extinguished at the Visitors Centre this morning. We expect the Visitor Centre has been severely damaged,” the university's statement said.

“An initial visual assessment indicated that no telescopes appear to have received major damage, but the impact of the fire on the instruments will not be known until later today.”

The university said power will be shut down at the Observatory while the damage is assessed today.

The telescopes at the SSO include the 3.9m diameter Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) of the Australian Astronomical Observatory, the largest optical telescope in Australia, the ANU's Skymapper telescope and the Uppsala Near Earth Object Survey Telescope.

Nobel Prize-winning astronomer and ANU professor Brian Schmidt reported on Twitter that the Skymapper telescope had survived the fire.

ARC Super Science Fellow at the Australian Astronomical Observatory Dr Amanda Bauer, who uses the 3.9m AAT telescope for her research, said that initial reports from investigators on the ground were that all telescopes survived the fire.

“The telescopes look like they are OK, there's no obvious damage to the outside of the structures,” said Dr Bauer, who live blogged the fire at her personal website.

“There were measures taken to protect the facilities, especially in light of the Mount Stromlo fires 10 years ago,” she said, referring to the destruction of the Mount Stromlo Observatory in the 2003 Canberra bushfires.

“There have been some controlled burnings over the last six months that may have helped the situation,” said Dr Bauer.

Monash University astronomer Dr Michael Brown said that webcams at the site recorded photos of the fire as it approached the Observatory.

“The webcams are normally there to keep an eye on the weather or see if a remotely controlled telescope has malfunctioned,” said Dr Brown.

“Most of those webcams stayed operative as the fire went through but at one stage the Rural Fire Service sent out a message saying don't increase the traffic to those webcams because they were using them to monitor the fire.”

Dr Brown said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the state of the telescopes.

“It looks like none of the telescopes burnt down, but it's possible some of them have damage to their wires,” he said.

“One of the weather stations reported, at one point, temperatures of 100 degree celsuis, but several of the webcams on the site are still functioning.”