The traditional approach to the extragalactic distance scale rests on a pyramid of primary, secondary and tertiary indicators of increasing range and decreasing accuracy. This multi-step procedure, fraught with the danger of cumulative errors, has led in recent years to two main, widely diverging scales: the ‘long’ scale (Sandage and Tammann 1974, 1975, 1976) implying a Hubble constant and the ‘short’ scale (de Vaucouleurs 1978, 1979; de Vaucouleurs and Bollinger 1979; de Vaucouleurs and Peters 1981; de Vaucouleurs et al. 1981) leading to H0 ≃ 100. Several authors have already shown that the long scale rests on very precarious foundations (Capaccioli and Fasano 1980, de Vaucouleurs 1981, Hanes 1980); counter arguments have been offered in its defence and to criticize the short scale (Tammann, Sandage and Yahil 1979, Sandage and Tammann 1982). For want of a conclusive test a consensus was still lacking.

When I began my studies of solar radio astronomy, Dr J. L. Pawsey, who then led the radio astronomy group in the Division of Radiophysics, CSIRO, explained to me that the internal structure of the Sun was ‘well understood’, thanks to a lack of conflicting observational data, but that for the observable layers of the Sun, the photosphere, chromosphere and corona, a great many mysteries remained. I am sure that he would have been amused by the recent discovery that there are not enough neutrons coming from the core of the Sun. I shall devote most of my talk to matters about which we are fairly certain, but often I will only be able to give part of the story because the details have not yet emerged from the wealth of solar mysteries.

The present Astronomy Advisory Committee (AAC) was set up by the then Minister for Science and the Environment, Senator J. J. Webster, in July 1979 following a Government review of astronomical facilities carried out by an interdepartmental committee (IDC) in 1978-1979. The IDC was assisted by an expert sub-committee, whose report Review of Observatories (1978) has since been published. The AAC consists of a chairman and ten members drawn from the astronomical community in Australia. It is serviced by the Department of Science and the Environment.

The Culgoora-3 list of radio sources (Slee 1977) contains measurements at 160 MHz of about 2000 sources which had earlier been examined at 80 MHz (Slee and Higgins 1973, 1975). The observations were made with the Culgoora radioheliograph, a 3-km-diameter ring of 96 reflectors, which achieves angular resolutions (full half-power width) of 3′.7 and 1′.9 arc at 80 and 160 MHz respectively; it has an effective collecting area of ~6000 m2.

The reasons for re-surveying the neutral hydrogen in the Small Magellanic Cloud and the results from that survey are briefly discussed in our previous paper (McGee and Newton 1982 — Paper I). We now present the experimental details, the 489 observed line profiles and details of the Gaussian analysis of each one. The profiles here are from the ‘main body’ of the SMC. Those of the ‘bridge region’ between the two Clouds of Magellan will form the basis of a later paper.

The cataclysmic variables are close binary systems consisting of a late type star and a collapsed star, usually a white dwarf, undergoing mass exchange. According to the standard model, the late type star (the secondary) fills its Roche lobe and material escaping from the inner Lagrangian point is transferred to the primary by means of a mass transfer stream and an accretion disc. The spectroscopic and photometric properties of most cataclysmic variables can be understood in terms of radiation from the various components of such a system, with the accretion disc usually dominating in the optical region (see Warner (1976) for a review). However, recently a new class of cataclysmic variables has been discovered with distinctive optical properties that are inexplicable in terms of the standard model. These systems known as the AM Herculis type variables have provided the first direct evidence for the presence of strong magnetic fields in the white dwarfs of some cataclysmic variables. We present here a review of some of the important properties of these variables with emphasis on the unique system VV Puppis which has provided the first unequivocal evidence for high harmonic cyclotron radiation from white dwarfs.

The theory of solar radio bursts remains a mystery to most astronomers and astrophysicists. The reasons for this are not hard to identify. First, the solar radioastronomical data are unfamiliar. (The observational data on solar radio bursts is being reviewed separately at this meeting (McLean 1981).) The important features of this data involve frequency-time structures in dynamic spectra, and such features are absent in data on galactic and extra galactic objects. Even for pulsars the data are obtained at discrete frequencies, and the frequency-time structures are not of major importance. Second, the theory itself involves plasma physical concepts which are unfamiliar to most physicists and astronomers. These concepts include those of plasma instabilities, microturbulence, and of particle-wave and wave-wave interactions. Third, one must also admit that there is a prejudice amongst many astronomers against solar physics: the Sun is regarded as interesting only to the extent that it can teach us about other astronomical objects. I shall return to this third point later.

The most extensive studies of supernova remnants (SNRs) in the past have taken place at radio and optical wavelengths.

This review surveys some recent observations of polarization in solar spectral lines with emphasis on their theoretical interpretation. Solar optical polarimetry is concerned primarily with measuring solar magnetic fields, a quest which began with Hale’s (1908) observation of Zeeman splitting in a sunspot. Today a wide range of optical polarimeters is used for solar research (see Bauer (1981) for a comprehensive review). For example, a standard magnetograph (Babcock 1953) detects circular polarization in selected wavelength bands in the wings of a Zeeman sensitive line, providing information on the line of sight or longitudinal field component. The most sophisticated instrument is a Stokes polarimeter (e.g. Bauer et al 1980, 1981) which measures with high spectral resolution the profiles of all four Stokes parameters (I,Q,U,V) across a spectral line. Such a device potentially provides all the data needed to infer the vector magnetic field.

In this review, I will be concentrating on problems related to the evolution of stars on the asymptotic giant branch (AGB). AGB stars are defined as stars which have completed core helium burning and have subsequently developed degenerate carbon/oxygen cores surrounded by hydrogen and helium burning shells; such stars have main sequence masses M≤9 M⊙ (Paczynski 1971; Becker and Iben 1980). In the HR diagram most AGB stars sit on the red giant branch. An exception to this rule occurs in Population II systems, where the AGB stars evolve asymptotically to the red giant branch from the blue side as the luminosity increases after completion of core helium burning on the horizontal branch.

J. Rahe of Bamberg reported on IUE observations of comets Sargent (1978) and Bradfield (1980).

Historically, infrared instrumentation for astronomical research has been developed by individual groups largely for their own enjoyment. The commissioning of the AAO’s infrared photometer-spectrometer (IRPS) in late 1978 provided for the first time in Australia a common-user instrument. Since then it has attracted considerable interest and is now the second most popular instrument in use at the AAT.

The 1.04 m telescope and auxiliary instrumentation conceived some ten years ago, are now operational and starting to produce results. Whilst the original purpose of the telescope was high dispersion spectroscopy alone at Coudé focus, access to a folded Cassegrain focus has been added to enable photometric observations to be made.

Many excellent reviews of gravitational wave astronomy have appeared in the literature (see for example Thorne 1980 and references cited there). Much has also been written on the potential of the second generation of Weber-bar detectors which, operating at low temperatures and exploiting superconducting technology, have design sensitivities up to a million times greater than those of a decade ago. Indeed such has been the intensity of activity in this area, that even before this generation of cryogenic detectors has come of age, a third generation, quantum mechanical in outlook, is already being conceived.

Infrared spectroscopy is a relatively new field in astronomy. When the study of celestial sources at wavelengths longer than 1 μm underwent a major spurt of growth in the mid-sixties, it was natural for astronomers to concentrate on broad band measurements. As detectors and instrumentation have steadily improved and the broad band characteristics of stellar sources in the IR have become better known, there has been a natural trend to higher spectral resolution. To date there has been sufficient work in IR spectroscopy to warrant several reviews on the subject. Although Australia has been late in entering this exciting and expanding field, the quality of work has more than made up for the delay. In this review I will briefly describe several projects involving IR spectra performed in Australia. Special emphasis will be placed on those experiments that cannot be done by any means other than IR spectroscopy. Also presented is a description of Australia’s next generation of spectroscopic instrumentation for the IR.

Speckle interferometry (Labeyrie 1970, 1976) is one way of overcoming the blurring effect of the atmosphere in optical astronomy. When a short exposure is taken of an image, the seeing disc (typically several seconds of arc across) is seen to contain structure (speckles) down to the resolution limit of the telescope (0″.03 arc for the Anglo-Australian telescope). A second exposure 10 or so milliseconds later will show a different pattern of structure because the atmospheric irregularities will have changed. Multiple stars or source components within the same angular range of atmospheric irregularity (i.e. isoplanatic patch several seconds of arc across) will produce similar but displaced speckle patterns, and geometrical details of the components can be obtained from an autocorrelation analysis of the speckle pattern (Dainty 1975).

In this contribution, which is an expanded version of an invited lecture at the 1982 A.G.M. at Noosa Heads, the author recalls some of the early work in radio astronomy from Dover Heights.

The Cross radiotelescope at the Molonglo Radio Observatory (Mills et al. 1963) came into full operation during 1967 and observations continued without interruption until 1978 when it was closed down for substantial modifications; these are now largely complete and observations have re-commenced. The decision to make some drastic changes was taken about seven years ago, although it had been evident right from the beginning that scientific returns from the Cross would drop sharply once the whole accessible sky had been surveyed. Indeed, the specifications for the original instrument were chosen to permit a subsequent conversion from 408 MHz to 1420 MHz with little extra expenditure on the reflector structure. Also, in 1972 a new form of circular polarized antenna was developed to provide a cheap mass-produced feed for 1420 MHz operation which could be easily phased and had good directional properties (Mills and Little 1972).

Since the work of Wu and Lee (1979) there has been renewed interest in the classical theory of electron cyclotron masers (Lee and Wu 1980, Lee et al. 1980, Wu et al. 1981, 1982, Hewitt et al. 1981, 1982, Melrose et al. 1982, Omidi and Gurnett 1982, Melrose and Dulk 1982). A useful idea in these recent developments of the classical theory concerns a geometric interpretation of the classical gyroresonance condition

where Ωe, is the nonrelativistic gyrofrequency, s = 0, ± 1, ± 2,… is the harmonic number, is the Lorentz factor and ║ and ┴ denote components parallel and perpendicular to the magnetic field. In v┴ − v║ space (1) represents an ellipse with centre v║ = vc, v┴ = 0, eccentricity e0 and semi-major axis V parallel to the v┴ axis, with