Professor Fred Watson

The answer is only maybe.

It may be no.

So what are we left with if we don't join the European Southern Observatory?

We're left with the Anglo-Australian Telescope whose funding at the moment is fragile.

We would hope that in the future that might become a bit more secure.

There are eight-metre class telescopes in the world that we have had sort of ad hoc relations with where you basically pay for telescope nights.

So what that gives you is a facility for optical astronomers to be able to make their observations, but it doesn't give you any buy-in.

into the instrumentation and things of that sort that these telescopes need.

So there's no way of that contributing to Australia's overall well-being by virtue of this, you know, the development of these technologies which sometimes have spin-offs that come into everyday life.

So that's the kind of thing that I suspect my colleagues are currently looking at.

In terms of something to rival the Extremely Large Telescope, we do have a small buy-in into an instrument called the Giant Magellan Telescope, which is being built.

Perhaps in Northern Chile it has seven 8.4 metre diameter mirrors arranged in a kind of flower petal arrangement.

So it's the equivalent of a 23 metre telescope.

But that has very precarious funding.

We subscribe to that through the ANU and other institutions in Australia back in the early 2000s.

But our investment in terms of how it buys telescope time is shrinking because the price is going up.

if indeed they actually manage to raise the funding to completely build it.

It's a $2 billion project.

So I think, yes, I think a missed opportunity.

And I think we are now in a situation where we're picking up the pieces.