
This is the "Ann Plate", a photograph that was taken during the commissioning of the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) in 1974 as a demonstration of the capabilities of new telescope.
The AAT was the first large telescope to be completely computer controlled, which resulted in an unprecedented level of control over the pointing of the telescope. The Ann plate demonstrated this by moving the telescope in complex patterns during a long photographic exposure of the night sky, tracing out circles, raster scan patterns, Lissajous figures and the name Ann in starlight. The ability to do this may sound trivial now, but it represented a big leap forward at the time and the Ann plate caused quite a stir when it was published.
So, who was Ann? The Ann in question was Ann Savage, an astronomer who was at the time a DPhil student studying quasars with the Parkes, UK Schmidt and AAT telescopes. She was at the AAT while this was going on, and allegedly suggested her own name on the basis it would be easy to programme into the telescope control system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Savage_(astronomer)
2/n
![Photo of a page from the symposium proceedings "Celebrating the AAO: Past, Present & Future". The relevant part of the text is as follows:
As I releated at [this] meeting, Californian astronomer Sandra Faber told me before I left Keck that, on seeing the Ann plate image projected at an astronomy instrumentation meeting attended by Pat and Graham Bothwell (at MIT?) she knew that a new era in instrumentation had dawned.](https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/206/082/990/795/279/original/6f98fbd03c2c9c9a.jpg)
![Photo of a page from the symposium proceedings "Celebrating the AAO: Past, Present and Future"
Text is as follows:
4. On the Ann plate
The famous "Ann plate", showing the capabilities of the AAT's computer control system, appear in teh paper by Pat Wallace in this volume. While the photograph is widely remembered, exactly who took it is slightly uncertain, and probably irrelevant. However, for the record:
Pat Wallace: I did the experiment and processed the plate, but I think an AAT technician was present in the PF cage for opening and closing the shutter, with me at the telescope controls... I guess it was 1975 [It was 22 December 1974]
Peter Gillingham: I don't think it much matters but I'm almost certain Ken Oliver (the first AAT electrician) was the Night Assistant for the night and he was the one in the PF cage. But, as Patrick says, aII he had to do was to open and close the shutter (several times) as Pat commanded.
It's also my quite confident recollection that, one or two nights earlier as we (Pat, very likely John Straede, and I) were discussing what should be traced on such a plate and puzzling over what would be a suitable word, Ann Savage, came into the Control Room and, on being acquainted with the topic of conversation, suggested "Ann" right away, pointing out its geometric simplicity [and only two alphabetic characters had to be encoded!].](https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/206/082/459/808/794/original/9deb0faa9c791574.jpg)

