The organization of the Anglo-Australian Telescope Project and the major features of the telescope design have been reported previously so only a brief description of the design aspects most relevant to the potential user will be given here.

Last year I described pairs of spherical mirrors that remove the coma and astigmatism in the image formed by a paraboloid mirror and leave the spherical aberration corrected. The investigation can be extended to deal with other shapes of primary mirror, for example the hyperboloid primary of the Anglo-Australian Telescope. The algebraic analysis becomes more complicated than for a paraboloid; but it still has the feature that at an early stage a cubic equation has to be solved, each real root of which gives rise to a second cubic. Thus in principle the mathematics could lead to nine solutions. However, it again turns out that not all the roots are real; and even for the real roots not all the solutions are physically useful, because in some cases the final image is virtual, and in others the tertiary mirror lies behind the secondary where light can not reach it. When the primary is a paraboloid, there are three useable solutions all with the property that the field corrector (consisting of the pair of spherical mirrors) can simply be scaled up or down at the user’s pleasure according to the diameter of the field he wishes to photograph. When the primary is of any other shape this is no longer possible.

An optical astronomical facility is being established near Hobart where the emphasis is being placed upon spectroscopy. A 40 cm telescope and Coudé spectrograph is already operational, and the 100 cm instrument will be operational by mid-1973. In this paper discussion is restricted to the 100 cm instrumentation.

The adjective ‘high’ when applied to the resolving power of radiotelescopes, has a meaning that has changed very rapidly during the last twenty-five years. In the late 1940s a resolving power of one degree was considered to be ‘high’.

The Molonglo cross-type radiotelescope has been in operation since 1967 and it is expected that its principal task, the fundamental sky survey, will be completed within the next few years. This by no means represents the end of the useful life of the instrument but we have been investigating modifications to extend further its usefulness. The most desirable modification appears to be a substantial increase in operating frequency to improve the resolution and positional accuracy.

A large proportion of the easily accessible radio astronomy spectrum lies between 50 MHz and a lower limit of about 1 MHz set by interstellar absorption. The features of the spectrum in this frequency range, from sources such as the galaxy, extragalactic sources, pulsars, the Sun and Jupiter, remain only partially explored mainly owing to the large sizes of telescopes necessary to obtain adequate angular resolution and sensitivity. In addition, below 20 MHz, interference from man-made radiation and from the ionosphere severely hinders observations. At the lowest frequencies, the effects of the ionosphere can be overcome by using earth satellite telescopes at the expense of greatly increased difficulty in attaining sufficient telescope aperture.

The 16-inch telescope on Canopus Hill (Tasmania) has been equipped with a Coudé spectrograph.

The Physics Department at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, has over the past three years commenced a research and teaching programme in astronomy and astrophysics. Observing facilities now include two metric wave meridian transit telescopes at a site 6 km from Dunedin and a 16-inch optical telescope, formerly at Mt John, which is now sited 4 km from Dunedin at the Signal Hill observatory built by the University’s Surveying Department for geodetic work.

Evidence has been mounting for some years that cosmic rays have a dwell time in the disk of the Galaxy of 106-107 years. This evidence comes mainly from the study of the chemical composition of the cosmic rays, for if the particles were stored in the Galaxy for a longer time the heavy nuclei would suffer more collisions with interstellar matter and would be broken down into lighter nuclei or protons (see, for example, Shapiro).

The accepted interpretation of the low frequency turnovers in the spectra of many extragalactic radio sources is that they are due to the effects of synchrotron self-absorption, i.e. to the source becoming optically thick. It has been shown that the signs of the degrees of both linear and circular polarization for a homogeneous source at frequencies where it is optically thick are opposite to those at frequencies where it is optically thin.

In this paper we give an account of the corrections that must be made to the formula for the emissivity ηf due to a power-law energy distribution of ultrarelativistic charged particles in a uniform magnetic field B0 in directions well away from the field lines when the effects of upper and lower cut-off values E2 and E1 in the energy distribution are not negligible.

Despite the success of the Babcock-Leighton model in explaining some phenomena of the solar cycle, e.g. Hale’s polarity law and Maunder’s butterfly diagram, it has recently encountered a number of observational and theoretical difficulties. The observational difficulties are centred around the different behaviour of bi-polar magnetic regions (BMRs) and uni-polar magnetic regions (UMRs). Babcock explains BMRs as the surface eruptions of toroidal fields wound by the differential rotation and it is clear that in their subsequent evolution and decay they are obviously influenced by this effect. However, UMRs display a sector structure in which the boundaries between regions of opposite polarities appear to be quite unaffected by the differential rotation but closely related to the interplanetary field sectors. Another feature of solar activity unexplained by the Babcock theory is the tendency of sunspots, flares, etc. to reappear at the same latitude during a cycle. Warwick has observed that proton flares show a preference for particular latitudes which may extend over several cycles. Again Bumba et al. have observed that new cycle fields tend to appear in longitude regions where old cycle fields are still visible.

Dissipation of shock waves has often been proposed as the energy source required to sustain the outward temperature rise in the solar atmosphere. Theoretical models for the heating process have been developed by equating the mechanical energy input to the radiative energy loss at each height, but neither of these processes is well understood, and the lack of data means that the models are necessarily crude.

It is well known from linear theory that a magnetic field or rotation, acting separately, have an inhibiting effect on the onset of thermal convection. This has been confirmed by corresponding studies of finite amplitude convection. On the other hand, when both magnetic field and rotation act together, the linear theory predicts that they may have conflicting tendencies. It is the purpose of the present paper to report on the investigation of these effects in the case of non-linear thermal convection.

Current observations and theories of solar bursts of types I, II and III suggest that the observed radiation may be emitted at a frequency close to the (fundamental) plasma frequency or its second harmonic. Refraction in a spherically symmetric corona would prevent radiation at the plasma frequency from reaching the observer except when the source is near the centre of the solar disk. However, it is found that fundamental frequency bursts are observed from anywhere on the disk. Recent analyses by Steinberg et al. and Riddle, in which the scattering of the radiation by coronal inhomogeneities was considered (in addition to refraction in an otherwise spherically symmetric corona), show that the radiation can escape from the plasma level and be observed for sources positioned almost anywhere on the disk. In addition, these authors and Fokker showed that a point source of radiation at the plasma frequency, or its harmonic, would be observed as an extended source with dimensions comparable with those observed. One implication was that the true source size is much smaller than the observed size.

Established techniques for inverting observed solar spectra rely on the use of centre to limb observations.

Globular clusters in the Galaxy are all old objects, with ages of about 1010 years. The LMC is quite different: its globular clusters have ages anywhere between about 5 × 106 years and 1010 years. It is important to find out why globular clusters can form now in the LMC but not in the Galaxy; the galactic globulars play a major role in our picture of the early history of the Galaxy, and it is obviously desirable that we should understand the conditions under which these clusters can form.

It is generally agreed that T-Tauri stars are very young stars of solar mass which are still engaged in the process of gravitational contraction toward the main sequence (Ambartzumian, Herbig).

That the parent masses of white dwarf (WD) stars can exceed the Chandrasekhar limit of approximately 1.2 can be seen from star clusters that have turn-off points in excess of this mass and still contain WD. Auer and Woolf argued that WD in the Hyades and Pleiades is evidence that stars with masses larger than 2.5 can become WD. Sandage and Jones have used the luminosity function to compute the number of WD expected in several clusters. Jones estimated that the brighter of the two WD sequences arises from stars of mass greater than 1-9 Schwarzschild, for example, has stressed the importance of a knowledge of the resulting mass-loss. Deutsch has discussed mass-loss from red giants and Faulkner has summarized the relationship between the planetary nebulae and the WD. Nevertheless, the role of WD formation in the enrichment of the interstellar medium and the relationship between WD and their parent stars is unclear.

On the basis of (R — I) colours it has been suggested that the N stars (the cool carbon stars) occupy a very restricted region in the Mb01 — log Te diagram (Te = 3300 to 3500 K) Mb01 ~ —3), falling on the normal giant sequence, but hotter than the M variables. This appeared somewhat puzzling in view of the variability of many of the carbon stars and their large range of periods, which suggested that the N stars ought perhaps to have similar temperatures to the variable M stars. In order to compare the continua of the M stars and N stars within the range of the R and I filters, and also to determine the continuum between the molecular bands, photometric observations were made of 20 M and N stars at carefully chosen wavelengths with 30Å resolution.