Fred Watson

Early life

Watson was born in 1944 near Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire in England, where he attended Belle Vue Boys' School. He completed his higher education at University of St Andrews, Scotland, where he obtained a degree in mathematics and physics in 1967. In 1975 he completed his masters degree in astronomy at St Andrews and gained his PhD from University of Edinburgh in 1987.

Watson confesses developing "an early love of music", which he used to help pay for his studies by playing guitar in folk clubs, and which he now applies in his work with Science Outreach.

Astronomy

Fred Watson is the Astronomer-in-Charge and Head of Lighting and Environment at the Australian Astronomical Observatory, a division of the Commonwealth Department of Industry and Science which operates the Anglo-Australian and UK Schmidt telescopes on behalf of the astronomical community of Australia. To this end the Observatory is part of, and is funded by, the Australian Government. Its function is to provide world-class observing facilities for Australian optical astronomers.

Watson's background is in observational astronomy, photonics, spectroscopy and instrumentation with research interests in large-scale spectroscopic surveys and the history of science. His current scientific activities centre around the RAVE survey, the GALAH galactic archaeology survey and the two forthcoming surveys – Taipan (galaxies) and FunnelWeb (stars).

Watson was the Project Manager for the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE), measuring the radial velocities and metallicities of up to 1 million stars in the Milky Way Galaxy and was active in developing instrumentation for this project by developing robotic wide-field fibre-optics systems for the 1.2 m UK Schmidt Telescope and the 4.2 m William Herschel Telescope.

The countries taking part in RAVE were Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, the UK and the USA. Professor Matthias Steinmetz, Director of the Leibnitz Astrophysical Institute at Potsdam in Germany, led the collaboration. The research team, completed the project which was aimed at learning where stars in our Galaxy were born, and how the Galaxy has grown and changed over time.

From 2003 the RAVE team collected data on the brightness, colour, distance and movements of almost half a million stars, revealing a 'dwarf' galaxy swallowed and shredded by our own galaxy, stars with unusual chemistry, and the way our galaxy wobbles. It has also re-weighed the galaxy.

The light from the stars was captured with optical fibres, precisely positioned by a robot. The robot picks up optical fibres, one by one, and places them on a metal plate in the telescope. Each fibre is in the right place to catch the light from a single star. By using many fibres, more than 100 stars can be studied at the same time. Travelling down the tiny glass threads, the starlight enters an instrument that spreads it out into its component wavelengths or 'colours', the way a prism does. These colours tell astronomers about the chemical elements a star contains and how it is moving. From that, the astronomers can work out how old the stars are, where they came from, and how they are related. And that's the key that unlocks the history of our Galaxy.

All this was achieved with the UK Schmidt Telescope (UKST). After the bushfire on 13 January 2014, and almost a decade of work, astronomers using the telescope finished writing the first chapter in the history of our Galaxy.

Watson is an Adjunct Professor in the University of New South Wales, Western Sydney University, University of Southern Queensland and the Queensland University of Technology. He is also an honorary Fellow at Macquarie University.

Other positions currently held:

Science Outreach

Fred averages 250 radio and TV broadcasts, 60 popular-level talks and several popular level articles per year. His radio work is based around weekly segments and other guest slots, with commentaries on astronomy and space news. TV segments include regular appearances on ABC News 24 and The Project (Channel 10).

TV highlights include the "retrial" of Galileo on Compass (ABC 1, 2010), and a much-publicised 60 Minutes segment on the Large Hadron Collider (Nine Network, 2012).

Talks have included the AAO/ANU Bart Bok Lecture (1996), the Australian Institute of Physics Youth Lecture Series, Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania (2001–02), the AAO Allison Levick Lecture (Birmingham, UK, 2005), and the Peter Canisius Public Lecture (Buffalo, NY, 2005). Frequent talks have been given at USQ, QUT, UNSW, UWS, the Australian Museum, Australian Geographic, NSW Education Department, Royal Institution of Australia, etc. Other appearances include the Adelaide Writers’ Festival, 2009, the Sydney Writers' Festival, 2008, 2010 and 2013, the Melbourne Writers' Festival, 2013, TEDx events (Macquarie University 2012, QUT 2013 and Pittwater 2014), and on board MV Sun Princess (2012). The Fred Watson Presents… series of popular science talks in Sydney began in 2014, and have continued in 2015.

He has also written a wide cross-section of the public read articles written by Watson in Australian Geographic, and Sir Patrick Moore's Yearbook of Astronomy in the UK.

Awards

Books

Watson has written several popular science books.

Papers and articles: List of 300 publications. About half are specialist technical and research papers, and the remainder popular-level articles (including the regular 'Space' column in Australian Geographic since 2005).

Music

Travelling

Since 2007, Watson has been a special guest and key instigator in astronomy tourism ventures. This provides a new vehicle for engaging the public in science is tourism. While taking leave from AAO Fred has led the following tours: