Report of Representatives on Carter Observatory Board

Board. Royal Society of New Zealand: Representatives, Dr. M. A. F. Barnett, Professor D. Walker. Wellington City Council: Mr. E. P. Norman, Mr. M. A. Castle. New Zealand Government: Mr. R. G. Dick, Mr. R. C. Hayes, Professor F. F. Miles, Mr. W. Pilliet Pringle.

Mr. E. P. Norman continued in office as Chairman and Dr. M. A. F. Barnett as Vice-Chairman. The vacancy due to the resignation of Mr. J. T. Martin, in December, 1957, has not yet been filled.

Building and Equipment. All property of the Board is in a satisfactory condition.

Educational Work. The Observatory has continued to be open to the public every Friday evening except in the months of December, January and February. There were in all 45 sessions, the telescope being used on 24 occasions and 30 lectures given.

Unsuitable weather conditions during the year caused attendances to fall considerably, there being 652 visits by adults and 801 by children, giving a total of 1,453. This gives a grand total of 27,507 visits since 1946.

Included in the above figures are seven daytime visits by secondary schools and a special visit for instruction in solar and terrestrial relationships by trainees of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service.

Several external lectures to various organisations were given, and newspaper articles on current topics supplied whenever possible upon request. A series of articles were supplied to the “Student's Digest”.

Much clerical assistance has been given to the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand, and the Lecture Room has been made available for their meetings. The Lecture Room has also been available to the Astronomical and Geophysical Section of the Wellington Branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Research Work, General. The output of research work fell considerably during the year due to heavily increased administrative work, as well as changes in auroral staff employed under contract with the Air Force Cambridge Research Centre, U.S.A. This is particularly regrettable during I.G.Y. period, when the output should have been at a higher level than normally.

Radio Disturbance Forecasts. The system of short-term ionospheric disturbance forecasts, which had been supplied to Admiralty via the Royal New Zealand Navy for some years, ceased in December, 1958. This service has continued, however, for the New Zealand Broadcasting Service and the Post and Telegraph Department.

It is of some interest to note that there does not seem to have been the general high degree of disturbance noted during the recent solar activity maximum as compared with the 1947 maximum. While this may be due to better selection of frequencies by radio engineers, the impression cannot be disregarded that the solar activity was of a different type or quality.

Solar Observations. Sunspot observations by the projection methods have continued, the results of which are distributed to overseas authorities as regularly as possible.

Due to the troublesome mechanism of the solar camera attachment, solar photography has temporarily been suspended.

General pressure of work caused any serious systematic visual spectrohelioscope observations to be abandoned.

Auroral Work. Visual observations were collected and analysed provisionally as in previous years, from New Zealand, Campbell Island, Antarctica and Australia. Considerable assistance in providing observers and communication channels was given by the Meteorological Service.

All-Sky Camera films from Campbell Island were processed and were very successful. Similar films and spectrocopic plates from other locations were processed under the direction of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The salary of Dr. M. Gadsden, attached to I.G.Y. Invercargill Station, was paid out of the Observatory Air Force Cambridge Research Centre contract funds. Reports supplied by him were forwarded to A.F.C.R.C.

Considerable time was spent in overseas correspondence, particularly with Sir Sydney Chapman, on general matters concerning the aurora, as well as trying to ascertain if international agreement had been reached in the method of reducing All-Sky Camera Films. This subject still appears to be in an unsatisfactory state, and to some extent held up such work in New Zealand.

Moon Position Programme. The Markowitz Moon Camera on loan from the United States Naval Observatory for determining accurate positions of the moon in relation to back-stars was successfully adapted to the 9-inch telescope with the help of the instrument maker of the Seismological Observatory. The same observatory also assisted with the loan of a good new chronograph.

A number of plates have been taken, but while the moon images are good, there is still some uncertainty about the star images due to excessive plate darkening. Similar troubles appear to have been experienced initially at other observatories, and it is expected that these