Abstract
In the period after the major solar events of February 1946, the solar emission at 200 MHz had decreased to modest levels. The typical 200 MHz intensities were less than 106 Jy—less intense by a factor of 10—by the next solar rotation in early March. The RPL solar group began at this time to concentrate on multi-frequency observations of the solar emission. Already at the PC (Propagation Committee) meeting of the previous November, elucidation of the metre wave spectra of the short term bursts had been proposed (i.e., the determination of the radio energy as a function of frequency or wavelength). At the PC meeting of 11 June 1946, Pawsey and Payne-Scott wrote: “Future work will concentrate on an exploration of the spectrum, both of the mean level and of the bursts”. A month later on 8 July 1946, it was clear work had begun in earnest. At 60–200 MHz, Payne-Scott had found that bursts did not correlate and simultaneous recording at 60–75 MHz had begun.( 1 ) In other words, detecting a burst in one frequency did not mean the burst would be identically or simultaneously active at other frequencies.
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Notes
- 1.
National Archives of Australia-NAA: C3830, B2/2, Part 1.
- 2.
NAA: C3830, B2/2, Part 1.
- 3.
The quiet sun provided a minimum for the 200 MHz intensity (6–8 × 104 Jy); at the lower frequencies, the sensitivity was not sufficient to detect the quiet sun, a few times 104 Jy.
- 4.
Joan Freeman was sympathetic when she wrote in her autobiography (1991): “There was only one case involving sex discrimination, beyond the powers of RP to control, which Ruby went to extraordinary lengths to circumvent. It was in 1944 that she let it be known that she was living with a man (Bill Hall) to whom she was not married. Nowadays little would be thought of such a situation, but in the 1940s ‘living in sin’, as it was called, was looked on askance … [Ruby] carried on as usual, unperturbed … Ruby had hoped, by her deception, to evade what she considered to be an outrageous and discriminatory law. All her RP fiends, having developed a strong affection for Ruby as well as respect for her scientific abilities, greeted the story with hilarity, and sympathized with her attitude.” Payne-Scott did not see the humour in the consequences of the CSIRO reaction in 1950 concerning her marriage (Chap. 10).
- 5.
Makinson told Goss about a number of interactions she had with Payne-Scott during the years 1941–1950 which included letting the Hall family live in their house for a year while Bill and Ruby Hall were building their own house in Oatley. In late August 1951, only a few months before Peter was born, Bill and Ruby Hall moved into their partially completed Oatley house which had as yet no water or electricity. NAA: A1/1/1, Part 6.
- 6.
Letter from John D. Murray and Joan Murray, 26 January 2004.
- 7.
The frequency of meetings was once per month from mid-1946 to mid-1947 1946; Payne-Scott attended about 65 % of the 63 PC (plus Solar Noise Group) meetings from September 1945 to the date of her retirement in July 1951. She was, however, active in mid-January 1947; on 14 January 1947, she wrote a short summary of the July–August 1946 observations at 60, 75 and 200 MHz. The details of the bursts are shown, similar to the report RPL 9 from August 1947. NAA: C3830, A1/1/5 Part2.
- 8.
The choice of end date on 12 August 1946 is puzzling. The solar noise activity associated with this prominent sunspot was far from over. Payne-Scott in RPL 9 mentions a burst that was “off scale” on 12 August at both 60 and 75 MHz. Allen (1947) indicated large 200 MHz bursts up to early September 1946. Could this abrupt cessation of the campaign in mid-August 1946 be related to her absence later on in 1946, perhaps be due to her miscarriage?
- 9.
In September 1944, the Women’s Employment Board (WEB) ruled that for wartime employment, women should receive equal pay to men for equal work. This state of equality was terminated by the WEB on 6 June 1949 when the ruling was rescinded.
- 10.
Type II bursts are the strongest of the solar events, occasionally reaching 109 Jy at 100 MHz. These are rare slow drift events (mean drift rate of −0.25 MHz/s at about 100 MHz with a range of drift rates in the frequency range 30 to 100 MHz of −0.1 to −0.5 MHz/s, Roberts, 1959) that occur in association with flares. They have lifetimes of a few minutes up to 15 min. Narrow band emission often is the occasion for harmonic lanes, i.e., radiation is observed at the fundamental plasma frequency and twice this value (first detected by Wild et al. 1953, 1954). The emission mechanism is plasma oscillation, stimulated by outward moving shocks.
- 11.
Dale Gary and collaborators at the Owens Valley Solar Array (OVSA) did report a decimetric (30 cm) burst of about 1010 Jy on 6 December 2006. It is possible that at metre wavelengths this burst exceeded the March 1947 event (www.physorg.com, 15 December 2006).
- 12.
NAA: C3830, A1/1/5, Part 2.
- 13.
As Suzuki and Dulk (1985) have discussed “these streams move out through the corona along open field lines at a speed of about c/3, and their passage sets up plasma oscillations – Langmuir waves- which then radiate at their characteristic frequency”. The energy range of the burst of electrons is typically in the range 10–100 kev. The electrons may be generated by instabilities located where opposing lines of [magnetic] force are in close proximity (Wild 1974).
- 14.
This account contains a number of misrepresentations of the solar work carried out in 1946–1947.
- 15.
Letter to Goss, 22 September 1977.
- 16.
Leaving their three young children behind with the two grandmothers, Pawsey and his wife arrived in San Francisco on 28 October 1947 and visited the University of California and Stanford. He left the US on 27 March 1948 after numerous visits to US institutes in California, the Midwest and on the east coast. He met Reber during this period, as well as Struve, Minkowski and many other well known scientists. After arrival in the UK on 1 April 1948, he was based at his old college, Sidney Sussex, at Cambridge with his host, J.A. Ratcliffe (his former Ph.D. thesis advisor). They arrived back in Sydney on 29 October 1948 after multiple stops in Australia—Aden, Perth, Adelaide, and Melbourne. In Melbourne, Pawsey met Bolton as his young colleague was travelling to the 1 November 1948 solar eclipse in Tasmania, shortly after Bolton and Stanley returned from “The Cosmic Noise Expedition to New Zealand” in August. NAA:C3830, A1/3/18.
- 17.
NAA: C3830, A1/1/1, Part 1.
- 18.
Surprisingly the plan called Dover Heights Programme 1 was an extensive set of solar observations by Bolton and his group of Stanley and Slee. Included in this programme was the continuation of simultaneous observations of the solar enhanced radiation (Type I bursts) with total and polarized intensity at 60, 85, 100 and 200 MHz, a programme that was in fact carried out in 1948 by Payne-Scott at Hornsby (Chap. 9). In addition, Bolton’s group was to also continue quiet sun observations with the sea-cliff interferometer during periods of low solar activity. “It is particularly hoped to see the beginning of a large spot; also another meridian transit.” In the end little came out of these solar plans for Bolton’s group; most of their effort in 1948 was concentrated on the 1948 expedition to New Zealand. Under the rubric “Dover Heights Programme no. 1”, the minutes of the 23 September 1947 meeting stated: “More accurate location and size estimate of Cygnus source. (New Zealand?).”
- 19.
NAA: C3830, A1/1/7.
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Goss, W.M. (2013). 1946–1947: Personal Tragedy and Professional Triumph. In: Making Waves. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35752-7_8
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