Giant Light Buckets. "Stromlo: An Australian Observatory" by Tom Frame and Don Faulkner [review]

Abstract

For whom is this book intended? Who needs the detail of instruments and their capacity, committees and their deliberations, institutions and their rivalries? It is not, according to the authors, 'intended for professional or academic astronomers', though they hope these will 'find much of interest'. It is therefore, by implication, meant for those of us with a lay interest in the cosmos and the struggles required to persuade the leaders of this rich country to support mainstream physics, for which Australia should have a box seat.