The history of early low frequency radio astronomy in Australia. 5: Reber and the Kempton field station in Tasmania

After initially making low frequency observations with Graeme Ellis near Hobart, Tasmania, in 1955, Grote Reber returned to Tasmania to carry out further observations in 1956-1957 near Kempton, to the north of Hobart. He chose to investigate at 520 kHz, and used four dipoles, each about 670m long, about 300m apart and approximately 100m above a valley floor. Reber deduced that there was a celestial component which appeared to have a maximum, with an intensity he stated to be 4 × 10 -20 Wm -2 Hz -1 sr -1 , around right ascension 22 hours, declination -6 o . By 1960, he had re-interpreted the results and concluded that the maximum emission actually came from a declination of about +42 o , in the constellation of Cygnus. However, two decades later, he expressed doubt that he had actually observed cosmic emissions at all. In 1957, Reber briefly also made observations from Kempton at 143 kHz. One of us (MG) has visited the Kempton site on several occasions in recent years and has located artefacts that have remained relatively undisturbed for nearly 60 years.