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Articles on Parkes Radio Telescope

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An artist’s impression of the Double Pulsar system in which the two pulsars orbit each other every 2.5 hours and send out high-energy beams that sweep across the sky. Image credit: John Rowe Animations/CSIRO

We counted 20 billion ticks of an extreme galactic clock to give Einstein’s theory of gravity its toughest test yet

Astronomers watched a pair of pulsars for 16 years to test the theory of general relativity, which has stood unchallenged for over a century.
The Parkes radio telescope can detect extremely weak signals coming from the most distant parts of the Universe. Shutterstock

The Dish in Parkes is scanning the southern Milky Way, searching for alien signals

The Dish in Parkes is scanning the southern Milky Way, searching for alien signals The Conversation50.7 MB (download)
Today we hear about the Parkes radio telescope's role in the search for alien life. Our guide is the irrepressible John Sarkissian, the scientist who's had his eye on The Dish since childhood.
Today we hear about some of the fascinating space research underway at Siding Spring Observatory – and how, despite gruelling hours and endless paperwork, astronomers retain their sense of wonder for the night sky. Shutterstock

‘The size, the grandeur, the peacefulness of being in the dark’: what it’s like to study space at Siding Spring Observatory

‘The size, the grandeur, the peacefulness of being in the dark’: what it’s like to study space at Siding Spring Observatory The Conversation, CC BY54.3 MB (download)
Three hours north-east of Parkes lies a remote astronomical research facility, unpolluted by city lights, where researchers are trying to unlock some of the biggest questions about our Universe.
The Parkes Observatory radio dish, the second largest telescope in the southern hemisphere, has a ‘multibeam’ receiver which can search 13 places in the sky simultaneously for signs of intelligent life. Shutterstock

Curious Kids: what has the search for extraterrestrial life actually yielded and how does it work?

The Universe is mind-bogglingly large and with the latest technology, the search is only just starting to heat up.
The 500-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is the largest single-dish radio telescope in the world. NAOC

How CSIRO is turbocharging the world’s largest radio telescopes

You can’t just buy a radio telescope receiver off the shelf. So CSIRO has been hard at work building receivers for the world’s largest telescopes using the very latest technology.

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