The Dish

<Remi>

A couple of nights ago, Mum made us watch a movie called “The Dish”.  It was a movie about the Parkes Radio Telescope and how it was used to receive TV and radio signals when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

The movie was good and we asked if we could go and see the real thing at Parkes.

The telescope is located in a sheep paddock in Central NSW.

Today we went there.

 

 

When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in July 1969, this telescope was the biggest radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere and it is pretty huge – 64m in diameter!

 

 

 

Since the moon landing, technology has improved and upgrades have made the telescope 10 times as powerful as it was originally.  A mobile phone signal on Pluto would be received as a very strong signal for the telescope.

There was also a visitor centre at The Dish with lots of information and a scale model telescope that you could make move.