Parkes Radio Telescope

The Parkes radio telescope, known to Australians simply as the Dish and by its Wiradjuri name Murriyang, has been operating since 1961 and remains one of the most productive single-dish radio telescopes in the world, with a 64-metre steerable surface standing in open farmland. It received and relayed television signals from the Apollo 11 moonwalk in 1969, a story dramatised in a well-known Australian film, and it has since been central to pulsar astronomy, discovering a large share of the known pulsars, and to the study of fast radio bursts. A visitor centre at the base has exhibits, a café and a small cinema, and the dish is visible moving as it tracks.

What you actually see

• The 64-metre dish - the telescope itself, often visibly slewing between targets.
• The visitor centre - exhibits on radio astronomy and the Apollo relay.
• The Apollo story - the 1969 moonwalk transmission told in detail.
• The paddock setting - the dish standing alone in flat farmland.

When to go

Year-round; the visitor centre opens daily with some closures on public holidays. The dish is an active research instrument, so it points wherever science requires. Clear days give the best photographs of the structure against the sky.

Honest expectations

Visitors cannot go up the dish or inside the control building; viewing is from the ground and the centre. Mobile phones and other transmitters must be kept off in some areas to avoid interference. The site is twenty kilometres from town with no public transport.

Nearby

Parkes town, known for its Elvis festival each January, lies south; Dubbo is northeast.