Abstract
Between 1963 and 1998, Professor W.N. Christiansen visited China more than a dozen times, bringing valuable scientific information, expert guidance and all possible help to the young Chinese radio astronomy team. Here, the writer presents his memories of two typical, deeply shared experiences, ‘The Shahe Experiment’ and ‘The Making of the Miyun Meter Wave Aperture Synthesis Telescope’, as expressions of the kind thoughts of a whole generation of Chinese researchers in astronomy.
This chapter is a slightly revised version of a research paper that was published some years ago by Wang (in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 12, 33–38, 2009), but the title here has been changed slightly in order to conform to the editorial style used for all of the history of radio astronomy chapters in this book.
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Notes
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For details of the Fleurs Synthesis Telescope see the various papers in the September 1973 special issue of the Proceedings of the Institution of Radio and Electronics Engineers Australia (Vol. 34, No. 8).
References
Christiansen, W.N., Labrum, N.R., McAlister, K.R., & Mathewson, D.S. (1961). The crossed-grating interferometer: a new high-resolution radio telescope. Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 108, 48–58.
Frater, R.H., & Goss, W.M. (2011). Wilbur Norman Christiansen 1913–2007. Historical Records of Australian Science, 22, 215–228.
Orchiston, W., & Mathewson, D. (2009). Chris Christiansen and the Chris Cross. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 12, 11–32.
Wang Shouguan (1986). Miyun Meter Wave Aperture Synthesis Radio Telescope. Chinese Astronomy and Astro-physics, 10, 3–11.
Wang Shouguan (2009). Personal reminiscences of W.N. Christiansen and the early days of Chinese radio astronomy. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 12, 33–38.
Wendt, H., Orchiston, W., & Slee, B. (2011). An overview of W.N. Christiansen’s contribution to Australian radio astronomy, 1948–1960. In W. Orchiston, T. Nakamura, & R. Strom (Eds.), Highlighting the History of Astronomy in the Asia-Pacific Region. Proceedings of the ICOA-6 Conference pp. 547–587. New York: Springer.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Dr. John Leahy (through Professor Wayne Orchiston) for kindly supplying Fig. 9.2, and to Dr. T. Kiang for translating the original version of this chapter from Chinese into English.
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Shouguan, W. (2017). The Early Development of Chinese Radio Astronomy: The Role of W.N. Christiansen. In: Nakamura, T., Orchiston, W. (eds) The Emergence of Astrophysics in Asia. Historical & Cultural Astronomy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62082-4_9
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