50 ASTRONOMY • JANUARY 2020If you plan a trip to the
Land Down Under, be sure
to check out these great
astronomical sites. TEXT AND
IMAGES BY DAN FALK
LAST YEAR, I HAD THE PRIVILEGE
of undertaking a 10-day driving tour of
southeastern Australia with my traveling
companions, Wilson da Silva and Carolina
Camilo. We traced out a loop of some
950 miles (1,500 kilometers), beginning and
ending in Sydney — a route that took in five
leading observatories in New South Wales
(NSW) and the Australian Capital Territory.
An added draw, of course, was the night
sky. I’ll never forget the view of the south-
ern sky that I had from some of these sites,
with velvety-black darkness, faint stars vis-
ible down to the horizon, and hardly a
trace of light pollution.
First, a tip: If you tour the Australian
countryside in November, as I did, be pre-
pared for the f lies — endless swarms of
relentlessly buzzing f lies like you’ve never
seen, especially in the evenings. With that
one caveat out of the way, I turn to the good
news: Australia is an incredible country full
of extraordinary scenery and numerous
sites to thrill any astronomy enthusiast,
including world-class optical and radio
telescopes — and kangaroos to boot!The Australia Telescope
Compact Array
Why settle for one telescope when you
can have six? That’s the idea behind the
Australia Telescope Compact Array, located
some 16 miles (25 km) west of Narrabri,
NSW, and a solid six-hour drive from
Sydney. We stayed overnight at Quirindi
along the way. Each of the six identical
22-meter antennas weighs as much as a fully
laden Boeing 747, yet can be moved with
relative ease along a 2-mile (3.2 km) stretch
of wide-gauge railway track — though only
at the modest speed of 2.5 mph (4 km/h). It’s
the largest centimeter-
wave telescope array
in the Southern
Hemisphere, capable
of detecting signals
from deep space as
weak as a hundredth
of a trillionth of a watt.
As interesting as
the telescope array is,
a return visit later that
night turned out to be
even more memorable.
Talk about a dark sky!
I didn’t have to search
for the MagellanicTour f ive great
Australian
observatories
The author (center) poses
with Carolina Camilo and
Wilson da Silva in front of
the 64-meter antenna of
the Parkes Observatory,
often simply called “The
Dish,” near the town of
Parkes, New South Wales.This warning sign
is posted on the grounds
of the Australia
Telescope Compact
Array for good reason.
The country is known
for its venomous snakes.