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Pendulum measurements of gravity in Australia, 1950-51

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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During 1950-51 pendulum gravity observations were made at 59 stations throughout Australia using invar pendulums on loan from the Department of Geodesy at Cambridge University. A national gravity base station was established at Melbourne. Subsequent comparisons with gravity meter ties suggest that the pendulum value is about 2 mgal. low. The standard errors of the gravity differences from Melbourne to the other stations have been estimated from internal consistency of the pendulum observations and from comparison with gravity meter measurements; the mean standard error is about 0.6 mgal. A small systematic difference from gravity meter values is assumed to be caused by the effect of the earth's magnetic field on the pendulums; after correction for this, the results agree fairly well with the American calibration system. Free air, Bouguer and isostatic anomalies have been calculated for all stations. The isostatic anomalies are for both Airy-Heiskanen and Pratt-Hayford hypotheses, and for four different assumed crustal thicknesses in each case. The isostatic and Bouguer anomalies are predominantly negative. A degree of isostatic compensation is present, but some large anomalous areas are uncompensated. The pendulum survey forms a basic network to which past and future gravity surveys can be referred.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title Pendulum measurements of gravity in Australia, 1950-51
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/en/dataset/8ee77899-d646-4374-bf23-79a2bf99318f
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 20/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    [
      [
        112.0,
        -44.0
      ],
      [
        155.0,
        -44.0
      ],
      [
        155.0,
        -10.0
      ],
      [
        112.0,
        -10.0
      ],
      [
        112.0,
        -44.0
      ]
    ]
  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Pendulum measurements of gravity in Australia, 1950-51". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/pendulum-measurements-of-gravity-in-australia-1950-51