Astronomy - USA (2020-01)

Mount Stromlo

Observatory

Canberra Deep Space

Communications Complex

Parkes

Observatory

Siding Spring

Observatory

Australia Telescope

Compact Array

Sydney

AUSTRALIA

New

South

Wales

NEW

SOUTH

WALES

52 ASTRONOMY • JANUARY 2020

Clouds (the Milky Way’s small compan-

ion galaxies); I simply looked up, and

there they were.

Also beaming down on us were

Canopus and Achernar, bright stars that

are never visible back home in Canada,

along with a plethora of southern con-

stellations. (And, mercifully, the f lies

were less bothersome at night.) The only

catch is that in November, neither the

Milky Way nor the Southern Cross is

especially prominent in the evening sky.

If I’m lucky enough to return sometime,

I’ll aim for March or April, when it’s

early autumn in Australia and the Milky

Way arches overhead.

Siding Spring Observatory

Narrabri was as far north as our tour

took us; next we drove southwest and

in a bit less than two hours reached

Coonabarabran, home to Siding Spring

Observatory. The site is something like

the Kitt Peak of Australia, in that it’s

home to not just one or two telescopes,

but a vast array of them. In fact, the

hilltop location on the summit of Mount

Woorut boasts some 50 astronomical

research facilities.

White domes of all shapes and sizes

pepper the site. Among them is the 154-

inch (3.9 m) Anglo-Australian Telescope,

the country’s largest optical telescope.

Other major instruments include the

91-inch (2.3 m) Advanced Technology

Telescope, the 49-inch (1.24 m) U.K.

Schmidt Telescope, and the fully auto-

mated 53-inch (1.35 m) SkyMapper tele-

scope. SkyMapper is charting the entire

southern sky, complementing the equiva-

lent mapping of the northern sky by the

Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Unfortunately, Siding Spring, like

many professional astronomy facilities,

is open to visitors only in the daytime.

Even if you could visit at night, most

modern telescopes don’t actually have

an eyepiece to look through. However,

a number of privately run observatories

are scattered around the area and are

more than happy to accommodate visit-

ing amateur astronomers.

Parkes Observatory

Of all the places we visited, Parkes

Observatory was the true jewel. In addi-

tion to being a world-class astronomical

facility, it’s also a stunning architectural

and engineering achievement. It’s one

of the few telescopes that’s instantly

recognizable in photos. Parkes has even

starred on the big screen, with a central

Evening sunlight catches the enormous

64-meter antenna of the Parkes Observatory.

The telescope, which dates from 1961, boasts

the second-largest fully steerable dish in

the Southern Hemisphere and played a

vital role during the Apollo 11 mission a

half-century ago.

Three of the six 22-meter dishes of

the Australia Telescope Compact

Array sit on their track near

Narrabri, New South Wales.

AST

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ON