Location: 585 Telescope Road, Parkes, NSW, 2871.
Country: Wiradjuri
LGA: Parkes Shire
Region: Central Western NSW
Website: https://www.csiro.au/en/about/facilities-collections/ATNF/Parkes-radio-telescope-Murriyang
Map: Below
Murriyang (Skyworld), CSIRO’s 64 metre radio telescope at the Parkes Observatory, near the IAT town of Parkes, is part of CSIRO’s Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) network. The Parkes Observatory also hosts two other radio-telescopes, the decommissioned 18-metre Kennedy antenna now known as Giyalung Guluman (Smart Dish), and the 12-metre Giyalung Miil (Smart Eye).
Murriyang was completed in 1961 and began its working life the following year. Since then, astrophysicists have used it to make many fundamental discoveries about how our universe works. Much of this science has been overshadowed by the telescope’s role in NASA’s 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing, however, when, with the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, it received the live sound and video images. (See Mount Coonambro.)
Decades after the Apollo moon missions, the fictional Australian film, The Dish, celebrated this telescope’s role in the moon landing and cemented its place in Australian popular culture.
See Georgia Hitch, 2019, The Dish made Parkes famous, but the first pictures from the Moon actually came from Honeysuckle Creek, ABC News, 18 Jul 2019. Last accessed 10 January 2025.
For more on this, see The Parkes Observatory’s Support of the Apollo 11 Mission by John Sarkissian, Operations Scientist, Parkes Observatory, October 2000.
Murriyang/Parkes Radio Telescope has been upgraded many times since the 1960s and continues to be used to expand our knowledge of the universe. Some of the most significant discoveries made with this instrument include:
- Most of the known pulsars
- The Galactic Magnetic Field
- Quasars
- The Magellanic Stream
- Gravitational waves
- Magnetars
- Fast Radio Bursts
- Supernova remnants
- Hundreds of galaxies with billions of stars
- An Einstein Ring
- Chiral molecules beyond the Solar System
As well as being used to make new scientific discoveries, Murriyang Parkes Telescope supports the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex to monitor Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 and to assist NASA with its Artemis I Mission to return to the Moon.
It has also been used in two major searches for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. From 1995, it supported the SETI Institutes‘ Project Phoenix (more >> more >> more >>), and, more recently, it has been used by Breakthrough Listen, a project launched by Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking in 2015 , to search for technosignatures of intelligent life beyond our planet (more >>, more >>, more >>).
This radio telescope received its Wiradjuri name, Murriyang (more >>) in 2020. It was added to Australia’s National Heritage List the same year (more >>).
Other posts about the Parkes Observatory on this site:
- Parkes Observatory
- Murriyang, CSIRO’s Parkes Telescope
- Giyalung Guluman (Smart Dish)
- Giyalung Miil (Smart Eye)
- Cosmic Conjunctions in Parkes
- Remembering The Dish in the 1960s
- Mount Coonambro
Caption
Top feature photo of Murriyang courtesy CSIRO.
External sources
Virginia Kilborn, 2023, Australia proves it’s a world leader in astronomy, accessed 8 Feb. 2021
CSIRO News, Murriyang: Parkes radio telescope receives Indigenous name, 9 November 2020.
Wayne Orchison, Peter Robertson and Woodruff T. Sullivan III, Golden Years of Australian Radio Astronomy: An Illustrated History, Springer, 2021. A free download of this book is available here >>
CSIRO, Murriyang, our Parkes radio telescope: An icon of Australian science, accessed 8 February, 2025.
More about this telescope’s history here >>
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Address: 585 Telescope Road, Parkes, NSW, 2871.
Post published 29 September 2024.
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