 I'm Dr. Brad Tucker. I'm one of the astronomers here at Mount Stromlo Observatory, and we're going to go on a tour to see all of the amazing things there, including places where we build satellites that go into space, lasers that talk to the moon, giant meteorites, and a whole lot more. Mount Stromlo Observatory is the headquarters of the astronomy, astrophysics, and space groups here at ANU. Mount Stromlo started in 1911, two years before Canberra, and we've been carrying out observations on the mountain since essentially September of 1911. We've done everything from studying the sun to solar eruptions, stars that explode, black holes, finding new planets, and everything in between. So let's go on a journey together. So this is the site of the original workshops where we build telescopes, instruments, and satellites. Now this was destroyed in the Canberra bushfires, and our new facility we're going to go check out. But on the site of this location we have these three small telescopes, and we use these for school groups in the public to come up and do stargazing here from Mount Stromlo. So it's a great way of interacting with anyone to show them the beauty of space with their own eyes. There's nothing quite like seeing the rings of Saturn with your own eyes. So this is the site of the Absala telescope, built in the 50s with Absala Sweden, to monitor stars. We even monitor some of the first satellites like Sputnik. Now these two domes have been built post-bushfires, and we use these with the ACT education. These are actually research telescopes for high school students. Students who are wanting to do astronomy, to do some creative work can come here and use these facilities. So just only high school students in the region get to do cutting-edge science from Mount Stromlo. Just over my shoulder on the top of Mount Stromlo is the original telescope, the Audi telescope, the ruins which were built in 1911. But next to it represents our cutting-edge work, done with the private company electro-optic systems. This is a space junk tracking laser. We can find objects centimeters wide, thousands of kilometers above the earth. And this is an aid to catalog and help clean up space. And right now we're leading a project to help develop a laser that will actually remove this debris. By using a laser that can cause it to de-orbit it, we can have it burn up in the earth's atmosphere safely, cleaning up space with lasers here at Mount Stromlo. So we are standing next to the 50-inch Melbourne telescope. Originally built for the Melbourne Observatory, it was moved to Mount Stromlo in the 1950s. It did important things like trying to find what dark matter could be, and in the process actually found some of the first planets around other stars, we call exoplanets. It was also used by Brian Schmidt to study supernova, these big explosions, distantly off into space for his Nobel Prize-winning work in 2011. In 2003, this telescope was planned to be an automated facility to digitally map the skies. But the fires changed that plan, and now we have skymapper at Siding Spring Observatory creating the first digital map of the southern skies. So we're in the main part of Mount Stromlo Observatory with a number of buildings housing our academics, engineers, scientists, students, and support staff. There's over 180 people working on-site. We're in the Duffield Building, this is one of our main academic buildings at Mount Stromlo where lots of our students' offices are and other astronomers. When you come in you're actually greeted by this fancy doorstop which is actually a meteorite. This landed outside Alice Springs about 5,000 years ago, and this somewhat seemingly small rock weighs about 250 kilograms, mostly made up of iron and nickel. And this is one of the things that we also do at Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatory is tracking asteroids as they come near the earth and entering the earth. And eventually things like this are studied at the Research School of Earth Sciences here at ANU. So now we're headed to the Advanced Instrumentation Technology Center. We call this the AITC. This is where we build telescopes. We build cameras for telescopes, laser systems, satellites, in fact what we call the National Space Test Facility is inside here. This allows us to do our cutting edge work, building facilities, not just at Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatory, but all around the world and even beyond. So this is what we call the Integration Hall. This is where we assemble, test, and get ready telescopes, cameras for telescopes, and satellites. Down here is a space simulation chamber we call our extra large wombat where we test equipment to make sure it is ready for space. So we're going to go ahead down and take a closer look. So we are in the lab where we are building some of the cameras and telescopes that we're going to be using around the world. Down at the end we have an instrument called Veloce which is going to precisely measure the atmospheres of other planets from our telescope at Siding Spring. We have new systems called adaptive optics and this using lasers and mirrors that can change shape actually take out the effects of twinkling stars and this is all where it's actively being built and designed. So our extra large wombat here is a space simulator. This pumps out all of the air and creates a vacuum like you're in space. So if you were to go in there you actually need a space suit to survive. We also pump and change the temperature so we think of space as being cold but it can also be hot. As you're going around the earth you can go in front of the sun which is 100 degrees Celsius and then into the shadow which is minus 100 degrees Celsius. So when you build a satellite or camera that's going to go up there you need to make sure it's going to work and this is the largest facility of its kind in the entire southern hemisphere and we use it not just for our own work here but other groups around Australia and New Zealand. We also have in the back a new telescope that is just getting ready for use and this is going to be a laser optical communication station. We're going to start sending data to the moon via lasers. We also have new lasers under development in the box as well as a room that can actually test the quietness of a receiver. If you're to go in the Enocho chamber it is so quiet you can hear things like your heart beating because we need to know exactly how strong our satellite is going to be over its distance. So I hope you enjoyed this tour of Mount Stromlo and all our awesome facilities up here. Thanks for watching and make sure to come and visit us when you're in Canberra.