The Parkes Radio Telescope (near Parkes, NSW) began operating in October 1961, so celebrates its 50th anniversary – an occasion which will be marked with due pomp and circumstance - next month.
The telescope is 64 metres in diameter, and can rotate through 360 degrees. It captures radio waves from space, rather than images, and clever scientists can convert this data into something that they, at least, can understand, and convert to information that the rest of us can try to understand.
This beautiful telescope’s major claim to fame, to the popular imagination, is that on 21st July 1969, it brought TV pictures of the historic Apollo II moonwalk to 600 million people around the world. It has since tracked other manned space events, no doubt very important to scientists, but not so momentous to the rest of us. The successful 2000 Australian movie The Dish recounts, with some poetic licence, the role that Australia played in televising the historic moonwalk to the world. Parts of the film were shot on location at Parkes telescope, and in the country towns of Parkes and Forbes. A large section of the rather excellent display at the telescope site is devoted to pointing out which sections of the film are fact and which are fiction. Basically, the good bits are fact and the silly bits are fiction.
The telescope continues to be updated, and is now 10,000 times more sensitive than when it opened.
Outside are two whispering dishes, about 50 metres apart. We tried them out, and they worked.
Doug carrying the weight of the world.
Precision sundial.
The gardens were beautifully landscaped with Australian natives.
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