The Discovery of the Radio Source Sagittarius A ( Sgr A)

W. M. Goss and R. X. McGee

(1) NRAO, P. O. Box O, Socorro, NM 87801, USA (2) CSIRO , Radiophysics Laboratory, P.O. Box 76, Marsfield, NSW , 2121 Australia

Paper: to appear in the proceedings of the 4th ESO/CTIO Wokrshop "The Galactic Center", R. Gredel (ed.), ASP Conf. Ser.

Weblink: http://www.astro.umd.edu/~gcnews/gcnews/Vol.1/mgoss@aoc.nrao.edu_sgrhist.ps


Abstract:

The discovery of Sagittarius A, a discrete radio source associated with the nucleus of the Milky Way, was made by Piddington and Minnett (1951) at 1210 MHz. McGee and Bolton (1954), however, brought to the attention of the astronomical world the association of Sgr A with the Galactic Nucleus. The paper was published in Nature and many well known astronomers (Baade, Oort, van de Hulst, Pawsey, Mills, Kerr, and Shain) were involved in the events leading to publication. We summarize the preparation of this paper, re-examining some details published by Morton (1985). In addition we summarize the significance of five publications from CSIRO, Sydney, Australia, in the period 1951 to 1954.


Preprints available from the authors at mgoss@aoc.nrao.edu , or the TeX and PS files here.

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