Ratings: CP ** Surroundings****
Parkes is home to "The Dish", a 64m diameter parabolic dish used for radio astronomy. Built in 1961, it has been upgraded many times and is now ten thousand times more sensitive than when first commissioned. The pointing accuracy is 11 arcseconds which is about the width of a finger seen 150m away. The moving part of the telescope above the concrete tower weighs more than two Boeing 747s - 1000 tonnes. The telescope works day and night and is used by 300 researchers each year, more than 40% of which are from overseas. It receives signals from space but never sends them.
Source: Information sheet compiled by Astronomy and Space Science, CSIRO, Australia.
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