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| Preface to the First Edition | View |
| Preface to the Second Edition | View |
| Journals of the Society | View |
| In the Beginning | View |
| Society Members | View |
| In Quest of an Observatory | View |
| Public Displays | View |
| The Blackwell Donation | View |
| The Site At Last | View |
| Building the Observatory | View |
| The New World of the Zeiss | View |
| People and Events | View |
| The Matauri Bay Solar Eclipse | View |
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In the Beginning
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The present Auckland Astronomical Society was formed as the Auckland Astronomical Association (being the Astronomical Section of the Auckland Institute and Museum) in 1922. Meetings were held about six times a year in the Physics lecture theatre at the Auckland University College. In 1929 the section had 29 members. (extract from later Minute Book).
Professor Burbidge
It all began in 1921. I was coming out from England that year through Suez. On board was Mr Hamer who was then engineer for the Harbour Board. He had information that Yale University was going to put a big telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, and was looking for a site. And Hamer said, "What about Auckland?" I said, "Well, yes, but you would have to make tests to give them some information." So he got in contact with Yale.
When I arrived here, to my surprise I found an old 6 inch telescope lying in the rubbish at the old Grammar School at the top of Wellesley Street. I disinterred it and we reconditioned it in the physics workshop. It had a 6 inch objective but no eye pieces; they had been stolen. This is the telescope that is now lent to the Society at the Observatory.
I raised some voluntary subscriptions in the community, particularly from Mr Percy Upton, and the result was we were able to buy the eyepieces which now exist, less one again which has been stolen.
Yale replied that they would be very glad to have tests done and were sending a 6 inch telescope. It arrived here with a very good objective made by Alvin Clark, and we combined this with our eyepieces which were much better than theirs, and as a result we had a first class 6 inch refractor. When we returned it to Yale I wanted to keep the objective but they wouldn't let me have it. I wanted to buy it, but it couldn't be done.
Hamer and I then did visibility tests. In between we put a hut up, (the Physics Department together with members of the Society) a little hut with a sliding roof in a little paddock at the side of the old Grammar School, where the Architecture School now is.
We observed every possible night for about a year, and took records and sent them to Yale. The average visibility came out at about six on the scale of 10, and wasn't good enough for Yale. They had much better visibility in South Africa, and telescope finally went to Johannesburg.
However, it was valuable testing work, and during 1922 we decided to form a Society because there were a number of people who were interested in astronomy.
Professor Segar who was then professor of mathematics was chairman, Mr. E G Jones was Secretary/Treasurer, Lunn of the Northern Building Society was a very enthusiastic supporter and Hamer and I were on the committee. We held committee meetings and also public lectures in the physics lecture theatre in the old Choral Hall building.
Mr McIntosh was operating in Auckland when I arrived but he worked at the Herald at night so there wasn't much contact between him and the rest of the Society. He was doing meteor observations when he went home from work.
The Society worked in a very small way-we would have had about 20-30 members - and quite a heterogeneous collection, including a few cranks. It went on in this small way, but always at the back of my mind I had the idea that the whole thing might develop in the future, with more support and bigger numbers.
Toward 1930 we were working for a site for an observatory and Mr Donner the city architect kindly prepared plans for the Domain and for the top of One Tree Hill, where the Logan Cambell trustees proposed to place a monument to the Maori race. We suggested that this should take the form of an observatory because of the close connection of the Maoris with astronomy, particularly, in navigation and agriculture. (I had lectured on this to the Auckland Institute). But unfortunately the effort failed, and an Egyptian obelisk was erected on One Tree Hill instead.
The main thing that we did in the early days apart from lectures was to take an observation of the annular eclipse of the sun that occurred in the late thirties. The object was to observe Bailey's Beads, which were a somewhat mysterious phenomenon then. We took a film record of the eclipse. This still exists-it's in the physics department and the exercise showed quite clearly the difficulty of visual timing and the inherent inaccuracy due to the irregularities on the moon. Bailey's Beads turned out to the bright spots of light that were shining through the valleys of the moon and creating halation's in the retina and on film-giving the effect of discontinuous beads around the edge of the moon.
That observation was done by me with students at Rangiriri. We had a little radio van in the Physics Department and we transported the telescope down that way. Several of my senior students were harvesting in the district at that time and they came along and camped at Rangiriri to help take the observations.
The first gift we had to the Society apart from the money for the eyepieces for the 6 inch telescope was a gift from an elderly man in Onehunga called Bostock. When he died he left the Society three houses, toward the foundation of an Observatory. I had been canvassing this need in public, but he was unknown to me, and this was a gift out of the blue.
R A McIntosh
There were earlier local Astronomical Societies, but this was the first real Auckland Society. We had our meetings in a lecture hall at the University, and across the road, on what was then a paddock we had an old building housing the telescope. It had a run-off roof, and once a week we pushed the roof off (it made a lot of groaning noises) and we did what observing we could.
We met in the physics lecture room at the university and the Society at this stage attracted a motley audience. It had a small membership and the public were admitted to lectures. It was never clear to me just why they came. They were certainly unresponsive and knew little of the stars, and it was not uncommon to see an elderly woman in the front row industriously plying her knitting needles throughout the evening, or for elderly men in the back rows to fall asleep after the first five minutes.
Prominent in the early days were Mr E G Jones, a lecturer at the Teachers Training College, who was the first secretary, Mr J P Artha, who had a small private observatory on the North Shore, Mr A G Lunn, a prominent businessman, and Professor H W Segar who delivered many delightful lectures on mathematics. On one occasion when listing various forms of geometry he insisted there could even be a geometry of love.
I had joined the American Meteor Society organised by Dr Oliver of Philadelphia and did any special observations he wanted done in New Zealand. In those days you could have a telescope and do something; nowadays you need to have a lot of knowledge of physics and other things before you can be of much use.
I was first elected President of the Auckland Astronomical Society in 1940 when it had a financial membership of about six and less than £10 in funds. The Society had run to a very low level at that stage. I don't think it was altogether because of the war. Up to then there had never been more than half a dozen workers in the Society.
We later had a room which we used in the Sunday School Union in Queen Street where we had our meetings and they had a fairly packed audience most of the time there. Mr Beaumont was the chief lecturer.
The telescope mentioned by Professor Burbidge was one given in 1884 to the Mr J McCosh Clark (Mayor of Auckland, 1880-83) by the citizens of Auckland when he retired from office. The telescope shared the distinction of several others at the time - it was believed to have been left behind by the American party which observed the Transit of Venus from the Auckland Domain in 1882, but the Americans did not have a six inch telescope with them.
The gift telescope was set up at Mr Clark's residence and Professor Thomas, a personal friend, used to give lectures and demonstrations there. A few years later the telescope was brought to Auckland University, to which it was formally presented in 1900. For a while the telescope was housed in a small room with a sliding roof at the top of a brick tower in the old House of Parliament (where the Supreme Court now stands) which had become the first home of the University, and there was discovered and used by a science student from Pukekohe, Leslie John Comrie, later to be director of the Nautical Almanac Office, Greenwich. It went missing during the First World War, until rediscovered amid the cobwebs of the cellar by Professor Burbidge.
T Rounthwaite
I was very proud when I got the key of the observatory. This was the six inch telescope where the School of Architecture is now. It was there when I joined the Society when I was 15, which would make it in 1936.
At that stage Ron McIntosh was running the observing section. He was very interested in meteors and was trying to organise people to watch meteors and draw them in on the maps he provided.
We used to get on our bikes and go out and see Alf Martin in Westmere. His 12 inch telescope was one of the best instruments in Auckland at that time and he was a very enthusiastic telescope maker. One night a week he would throw his place open to people who would like to come along. Dr Corban used to go along and Walter Jackson.
It was Alf Martin who set me on making telescopes. He made me realise that I could do it; in fact he gave me my first 12 inch mirror. I still have it.
H O Williams
For a long period there was not much equipment and no observatory, there were no really enthusiastic astronomers as we seem to have nowadays.
I made my first telescope when I came to Auckland from the State Hydro Department in 1939. I mentioned to someone that I was interested in astronomy and someone said you ought to see Alf Martin in Garnett Road. There was Alf Martin with a 6 inch refractor and a 12 inch and a 14 inch reflector. Both the reflectors he had made himself, and he used to have a great retinue of telescope makers coming to him for advice.
He proposed me for the Royal Astronomical Society and I was with him for a long time before I joined the Auckland Society. At first I was just a member, attended the lectures and then I got involved in telescope making. Since there were not any really good astronomical programmes going at the time, I became curator of instruments after the Zeiss was bought and after it had been put in by a man from Mt Stromlo who came to New Zealand for a holiday, all of which he spent erecting and aligning the telescope here.
S C Mayer
At the time I was secretary (1939-43), there would have been only about 15 or 16 members. Most of the activity of the Society centered on lectures, and although we had the observatory in Symonds Street I did all my work with Mr McIntosh, using his own telescope. He was mainly interested in meteors and variable stars and I in Jupiter. I must have followed Jupiter for a couple of years or more doing about three drawings a week. We both sent our stuff off to the British Astronomical Society.
D C Fisher
When I came up from Napier in 1937, Ron McIntosh was looking after the junior section with a membership of about half a dozen. The only other one I remember about being in it was Trevor Rounthwaite. Little was happening apart from the monthly lectures, although we started to observe variable stars and I have a vague memory of drawing charts.
We met in the physics lecture hall and the six inch telescope used to be open to the public on Tuesday nights. We used to have maybe four or five or six of the public along, but then it was a slide-off roof, out in the open in a paddock. We used to show them Jupiter and the Moon, and Mars if it was around. There was no other activity tat I know or, and then the war came along.
The story of the struggles of the war years is told briefly in a frontis note in the minute book which was started when the Society was incorporated after the war.
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