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Germanicus
01-23-2014, 03:45 AM
I live right near the Parkes Observatory. The Parkes Telescope, or The Dish, is the telescope that was used to beam the images of the moon landing to your parents on their televisions back in 1969.


A little under nine minutes into the broadcast, the TV was switched to the Parkes signal. The quality of the TV pictures from Parkes was so superior that NASA stayed with Parkes as the source of the TV for the remainder of the 2.5 hour broadcast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory


The project was not without its dramas; on the day of the Moonwalk the wind was gusting at 100 km per hour. Normally the telescope would not operate under such conditions due to safety reasons, but the telescope director gave the go-ahead. Wind gust in excess of 110 kilometres per hour (70 mph) buffeted the telescope, subjecting it to forces 10 times stronger than what was considered safe operating limits.
http://www.cio.com.au/article/402613/dish_parkes_celebrates_50_years/

Oi oi oi!

If not for the hardcore staff of the Parkes Dish the world would have had to watch even crappier quality images than they did. Go Parkes. Or Peak Hill in my opinion. The Dish is closer to Peak Hill.


Radio telescope

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/The_Parkes_64m_Radio_Telescope_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Parkes_64m_Radio_Telescope_) http://bits.wikimedia.org/static-1.23wmf10/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Parkes_64m_Radio_Telescope_)
The Parkes 64m Radio Telescope "The Dish" at full extension to the ground.


The Parkes Radio Telescope, completed in 1961, was the brainchild of E.G. (Taffy) Bowen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taffy_Bowen), chief of the CSIRO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSIRO)'s Radiophysics Laboratory. During the Second World War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_World_War), he had worked on radar development in the US and had made some powerful friends in the scientific community. Calling on this old boy network (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_boy_network), he persuaded two philanthropic organisations, the Carnegie Corporation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Corporation) and the Rockefeller Foundation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Foundation) to fund half the cost of the telescope. It was this recognition and key financial support from the US that persuaded then Prime Minister Robert Menzies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Menzies) to agree to fund the rest of the project.[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory#cite_note-1)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory
One of my little sisters works at the Observatory which is kind of cool because the CSIRO is our version of NASA.


Australia played an important role in the broadcast of the images of the first moon landing.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asmnn0mNEeE

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