CSIRO Parkes telescope construction
1961: Construction of the 64-metre diameter telescope at CSIRO’s Parkes Observatory is completed, an achievement of engineering and technical design.
1962: Researchers using Parkes find that our Galaxy has a magnetic field a million times weaker than Earth’s magnetic field.
1968: Astronomers using Parkes detect pulsar signals, just weeks after UK researchers announce the discovery of pulsars.
1969: Parkes receives television signals from the Apollo 11 Moon landing and relay them to a worldwide audience of 600 million people.
1973: Parkes is used to discover the Magellanic Stream, a long trail of hydrogen gas flowing from two small neighbouring galaxies called the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
1982: Researchers using Parkes discover a quasar called PKS 2000-330, the most distant object in the Universe known at the time.
1998-2003: Astronomers carry out a survey with Parkes that reveals a new spiral arm in our Galaxy.
2003: Astronomers using Parkes discover the first known double pulsar system which enables stringent tests of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
2007: An unexpected burst of radio waves, more recently known as a ‘fast radio burst’, is found using Parkes archival data.
2011: Astronomers using Parkes discover a planet, most likely composed of compressed carbon, in orbit around a pulsar that is dubbed the ‘diamond planet’.
2018-19: NASA use Parkes to support the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in tracking the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it enters interstellar space.