The Perth Observatory has a long history of astronomical research. This is due to our location in the Southern Hemisphere and the hard work of the astronomers employed by the Observatory.

1890 - 1899

1897 – Established a weather monitoring network across WA that produced reliable forecasts within four years (including the first cyclone warnings)

1897 – Established a time service for the new port of Fremantle and distributed to the rest of WA using the telegraph

1899 – Position of Meridian Telescope adopted as the reference point for WA surveys

1900 - 1909

1900 – Perth Astrographic Catalogue -31° to -41° Dec. -229,000 star positions (Through to 1921)

1901 – Observations of Great Southern Comet

1910 – Cooke first exhibits his heliochronometer

1911 - 1919

1911 – Tidal measurements started;

1911 – Expedition to Tongan solar eclipse;

1921 - 1929

1921 – Western Australian State boundary surveyed

1922 – Part of the expedition to Wallal for the solar eclipse to prove Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

1941 -1949

1942 – US Navy broadcast Perth Observatory time signal at short wavelengths (Through to 1945)

1949 – Edinburgh/Perth Astrographic Catalogues published – 139,000 stars (Through to 1953)

1950 - 1959

1957 – Project Moonwatch – program to track early artificial satellites (Through to 1961)

1958 – Markowitz Moon Camera – USNO determination of Ephemeris Second (Through to 1960)

1960 - 1969

1967 – Hamburg Observatory Meridian Telescope expedition (Through to 1971)

1969 – Astrographic Catalogue second epoch plates (Through to 1985)

1970 - 1979

1970 – First Minor planet discovered at the new Observatory (MP 2993 Wendy)

1971 – NASA International Planet Patrol (Through to 1976)

1973 – IAU Symposium no. 61 held in Perth

1974 – Perth 70 Meridian Catalogue published

1977 – Co-discovery of Uranus’s ring system

1980 - 1989

1982 – Perth 75 Meridian Catalogue published

1985 – Astrographic telescope produces 10% of all ground-based positions for Comet Halley

1986 – University of Maryland and Perth Observatory discover CN Jets in images of Comet Halley

1988 – Perth 83 Meridian Catalogue published

1988 – Development of the Perth-Lowell Automated Telescope in collaboration with UWA, Curtin University and Murdoch University (Through to 1992)

1988 – Perth Astronomy Research Group (PARG) is formed

1990 - 1999

1993 – Perth Automated Supernova Search discovers 30 supernovae (Through to 2011)

1995 – Foundation members of Probing Lensing Anomalies with a Network of Telescopes (PLANET)

1999 – 29 Minor Planet discoveries (Between 1970 and 1999)

2000 - 2009

2005 – PLANET’s discovery of super-earth exoplanet OGLE-2005-BLG-390lb

2010 - 2019

2012 – PLANET’s statistics paper on the abundance of exoplanets around Milky Way stars

2012 – Light pollution map of Perth covering 2400 square kilometres

2017 – Joined the COMSPOC’s Space Situational Awareness network

2020 - 2022

2022 – Captured the occultation of the star UCAC4-224-161658 by the asteroids Patroclus/Menoetius for NASA’s Lucy Mission to the Trojan Asteroids.

2022 – Joined the Global Meteor Network which is part of the Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance project (CAMS), a NASA-sponsored international project that tracks and triangulates meteors.