SRI09 Delegate Tour of the Australian Synchrotron Facility

All delegates at SRI09 were invited to attend a tour of the Australian Synchrotron on Wednesday 30th September from 1:30pm – 5:30pm.

The Australian Synchrotron is now one of fifteen third generation instruments operating across the globe and its performance has proved to be exceptional by world standards. The accelerator, the heart of the instrument, now consistently generates more than 98% light beam availability and places the facility in the top five performing machines world-wide.

Since its official opening in July 2007, the Australian Synchrotron is growing up and moving into the next phase of its life. In March 2009, we saw that the word was starting to spread about this facility. Interstate users now outnumber local ones and we are now attracting users from around the world: Asia, Europe and North America.

Currently 9 beamlines have been commissioned with potential for 32 beamlines in total.  They are:

•    High-throughput Protein Crystallography
•    Infrared Spectroscopy
•    Soft X-ray Spectroscopy
•    X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy
•    Powder Diffraction
•    Protein Micro-crystal and Small Molecule X-ray Diffraction
•    X-ray Fluorescence Microprobe (Microspectroscopy)
•    Small and Wide Angle Scattering
•    Imaging and Therapy

During the tour, delegates had the opportunity to talk with users and scientific support staff and exchange ideas on various instrumentation and technologies.

There was also the opportunity for delegates to inspect the 150 meter underground imaging and medical beam transfer tunnel connected to a satellite building outside of the main synchrotron facility which will be used for high resolution imaging.
Stage 1 of this building project and installation of equipment is now completed with stage 2 currently underway.

As the most recently operating synchrotron - this was a great opportunity for many international delegates to visit the Australian Synchrotron to inspect our operations, instrumentation and see our progress to date.

All of our beamline support scientists including the principle scientists were on hand at each beamline to discuss specific instrumentation and technology

For more information on the Australian Synchrotron, please visit the Australian Synchrotron website, www.synchrotron.org.au