IAU-URSI HISTORICAL RADIO ASTRONOMY WORKING GROUP

Note: This page includes Working Group Reports and history talks at Working Group sessions at IAU and URSI General Assemblies. For a listing of history talks presented at other meetings, see the WG History Talks page.

2023 URSI General Assembly

• History of Radio Astronomy: Celebrating 90 Years of Innovation and Discovery. General Talk by Ronald D. Ekers, 23 August 2023, URSI General Assembly, Sapporo, Japan.

Working Group Meeting - 2022 IAU General Assembly

• Agenda for HRAWG meeting, History of Radio Astronomy in Eastern Asia, Friday 5 August 2022, 13:30 - 16:30 [All speakers have given permission for publication of their talks and the recordings.]

  Presentations:

  • Radio astronomy developments in Republic of Korea - Se-Hyung Cho

  • History of radio interferometers in Japan - Masato Ishiguro

  • Developments of VLBI in Japan - Hideyuki Kobayashi

  • 25 years of the VSOP/HALCA launch - Hisashi Hirabayashi

  • History of radio astronomy in Taiwan - Paul Ho

  • History of radio astronomy in China: from early days to SKA and FAST - Bo Peng

  • History of VLBI in China - Zhiqiang Shen

  • History of mm and sub-mm astronomy in China - Ji Yang

  Audio and video recordings of the 5 August 2022 session. We recommend that you download rather than try to listen/view online.
  • Audio only: audio, part 1; audio, part 2.

  • Video with audio: video, part 1; video, part 2

Working Group Meetings - 2021 URSI General Assembly

• Impact of Radio Astronomy on Technology and Society.

  This session was organised by the URSI-IAU WG on Historical Radio Astronomy and comprised invited talks and contributed posters that focused on a number of the developments and inventions in the history of radio astronomy that have directly or indirectly impacted society. The invited talks covered The story of WiFi; VLBI, navigation and geodesy; Radio interferometry and medical imaging; Cold-war diplomacy and related activities at Jodrell Bank Observatory; Deep space navigation; and Parkes and Apollo 11. Convenors: Richard Schilizzi, Leonid Gurvits, Ken Kellermann, Richard Wielebinski.

  Invited talks and speakers:

  • The Story of Wifi - David Skellern (RoZetta Institute, Sydney)

  • VLBI for Geodesy, Astrometry, and Navigation - Megan Johnson and Bryan Dorland (USNO)

  • Cold-war diplomacy at the Jodrell Bank Observatory - Simon Garrington and Tim O'Brien (JBCA)

  • Radio Interferometry and Medical Imaging - Ilana Feain (CASS)

  • Deep Space Navigation: Leveraging Experience from Radio Astronomy - Les Deutsch, Joseph Lazio, Stephen Lichten (JPL)

  • Apollo 11 and the First Moonwalk: from the Parkes control room, 21 July 1969 - Jasper Wall (UBC)

Working Group Meetings - 2018 IAU General Assembly

• The History of Large Single Dish Projects and Lessons Learned, 27 August 2018
  • Jaap Baars: Review of the Evolution of Large Single Dishes (pdf)
  • Simon Garrington: The Lovell Telescope ... through its surfaces (pdf)
  • Douglas Bock: The Parkes Telescope (pdf)
  • Alex Kraus: The Effelsberg 100-m Dish - The First Homologous Radio Telescope (PowerPoint)
  • Ken Kellermann: The Largest Feasible Steerable Telescope (PowerPoint)
  • Carsten Kramer: The IRAM 30m Telescope on Pico Veleta (pdf)
  • Bo Peng: The Cable-Driven Dish FAST - Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (PowerPoint)

Working Group Meetings - 2017 URSI General Assembly

• Interferometers and Arrays: Lessons Learned, 25 August 2017
  • Masato Ishiguro: Nobeyama Millimeter Array (pdf)
  • Pierre Cox: The Role of IRAM in Millimeter Astronomy: An Historical Perspective (PowerPoint)
  • Tony Beasley: Lessons from ALMA Construction (PowerPoint)
  • Sandy Weinreb: The Very Large Array: Origin, Development, and Construction (pdf)
  • Douglas Bock, Ron Ekers, Bob Frater: Australia Telescope Compact Array (pdf)
  • Yashwant Gupta, Govind Swarup: The GMRT: A Look at the Past, Present and Future (pdf)
  • Simon Garrington: e-MERLIN: Past, Present & Future (pdf)
  • Huib van Langevelde: The Evolution of EVN & JIVE (pdf)
  • Leonid Gurvits: Half a Century of Space VLBI: Lessons Learned (pdf)
  • Richard Strom, Leonid Gurvits: History of the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) (pdf)
  • David L. Jauncey, Christopher S. Jacobs, Charles J. Naudet, Robert A. Preston, James Lovell, Cristina Garcia-Miro & Shinji Horiuchi: The DSN in Global VLBI Collaboration (pdf)
  • James Moran: The Origins, Development and Potential of VLBI (PowerPoint)

Working Group Meetings - 2015 IAU General Assembly

• Golden Anniversary of the 1960s: The Golden Years of Radio Astronomy, 5 August 2015, Room 328. Program - pdf
  • Jocelyn Bell Burnell: Reflections on the Discovery of Pulsars (PowerPoint); Audio
  • Cyril Hazard, Dave Jauncey, W.M. Goss, David Herald: 3C273 and the Quasar Revolution (PowerPoint); Audio
  • Jim Moran: Cosmic Masers (PowerPoint); Audio
  • Ron Ekers: The Impact of the New Generation of User Oriented Radio Telescopes (PowerPoint); Audio
  • Bob Wilson: Discovering Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (PowerPoint); Audio
  • Sergei Gulyaev: Radio Recombination Lines (PowerPoint); Audio
  • Jack Welch: Interstellar Molecules and Astrochemistry (PowerPoint); Audio
  • Richard Wielebinski: Cosmic Magnetism (PowerPoint); Audio
  • Leonid Gurvits, Ken Kellermann: Radio Source Variability (pdf); Audio

• Contributed Papers and Business Meeting, 2-3:30, Room 328. Agenda - pdf
  • Tony Tyson: Against All Odds: Jansky Returns to Star Noise in 1937
  • Miller Goss: First Solar Noise Observations in Sydney, October 1945: Radio Discovery of the Million Degree Solar Corona- 2015 Discovery of Pawsey's Original Data
  • George Miley: Jodrell Bank Long Baseline Interferometry in the Sixties: From "Field 80" to International Politics

Working Group Reports:

• IAU Commission B 2022 Annual Report. IAU-URSI Joint Working Group on Historical Radio Astronomy annual report for 2022.
• 2018-2021 report, IAU-URSI Joint Working Group on Historical Radio Astronomy. A pdf of the report as presented at the URSI General Assembly on 1 September 2021 is here.
• IAU Commission B 2019 Annual Report. See page 6 for the 2019 report of the IAU-URSI Joint Working Group on Historical Radio Astronomy.
• IAU Commission C Newsletter, Spring 2020. See pages 19-21 for the 2019 report of the IAU-URSI Joint Working Group on Historical Radio Astronomy.
• 2018 IAU General Assembly XXX, Vienna, Austria
  • Preliminary Triennial Report from the Working Group on Historical Radio Astronomy for inclusion in the Commission B4 Triennial Report (pdf)
• 2017 URSI General Assembly, Montreal, Canada
  • Working Group on Historical Radio Astronomy Report, presented to URSI Commission J, August 2017 (pdf)
• 2015 IAU General Assembly XXIX, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
  • Triennial Working Group Report, PowerPoint presented to IAU Commission C40, 6 August 2015.
• 2012 IAU General Assembly XXVIII, Beijing, China
  • Triennial WG Report, 2009-2012, as published in Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (pdf)
  • WG 2009-2012 Report as published online in April 2012 in Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union December 7: pp 311-313, (DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S174392131200302X) (pdf)
  • Beijing General Assembly HRAWG Program (pdf)
  • Ron Ekers presentation: How Fred Hoyle reconciled radio source counts and the Steady State Cosmology (PowerPoint file)
  • Tony Tyson presentation: Preservation of the Bell Labs Jansky Site (PowerPoint file)
• 2009 IAU General Assembly XXVII, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Triennial WG Report, 2006-2009, as published in Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 12 (3), 249-253, 2009 (pdf)
  • WG 2006-2009 Report presented at the 2009 meeting, as published in IAU Transactions XXVIIB, 246-247 (pdf)
  • Agenda and presentation at WG business meeting, 4 August 2009 (pdf)
• 2006 IAU General Assembly XXVI, Prague, Czech Republic
  • Progress Report 1, as published in Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 7, 53-56, 2004 (pdf)
  • Progress Report 2, as published in Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 8 (1), 65-69, 2006 (pdf)
  • Triennial WG Report, 2003-2006, as published in Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 9 (3), 203-205, 2006 (pdf)
  • Orchiston, W., Kellermann, K.I., Davies, R.D., Débarbat, S.V., Morimoto, M., Slysh, S., Swarup, G., van Woerden, H., Wall, J.V., and Wielebinski, R., 2008. Inter-Division IV-V-IX. Working Group on Historic Radio Astronomy. Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, Vol. 4. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) 344-345.

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