Parkes Observatory

- 33148.26222222222Koordinaten: 33 ° 0 ' 0 " S, 148 ° 15' 44" O

The Parkes Observatory is a radio observatory in Australia. Its location in 392 m height is 20 km from Parkes, New South Wales. It was known especially for the transmission of the first moon landing to the rest of the world.

Main instrument is the Parkes radio telescope, which was the largest moving telescope of its kind in the southern hemisphere with 64 meter diameter antenna long. Built in 1961, it is to this day almost constantly in use. Later on the inside in the middle was lined with a smooth metal to also cover microwaves in the centimeter and millimeter range. The outer edge was a fine metal mesh. All this gives the dish a distinctive appearance.

The telescope is aligned with an azimuthal mounting. It is passed through a small telescope in the same structure, but which is provided with an equatorial mount. The two are dynamically linked in the pursuit of an astronomical object together with a laser system.

The receiver cabin, the focus of the parabolic dish is held by three struts in 27 meters height. It contains various measuring instruments for radio - and microwaves, which can be directed for investigations into focus.

The observatory is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, a network of radio telescopes. Very often it is working with the Australia Telescope Compact Array in Narrabri and a single antenna in MoPra by the process of Very Long Baseline Interferometry together.

During the Apollo program, NASA radio telescope was also used for communication and telemetry when the moon was visible only on the Australian side of the earth, if the actual NASA ground station Honeysuckle Creek should have technical problems. This was in 2000, presented in The Dish, a feature film starring Sam Neill in the title role.

Some of the many tasks of the radio telescope were and are the distance -sensitive search of signatures of hydrogen as an indicator of galaxies ( HIPASS project) and work for the SETI project.