Phys.org
Places · Observatory
Murriyang — the Parkes dish
Relayed the Apollo 11 moonwalk to the world, and has since found a large fraction of all known fast radio bursts.
- Where
- New South Wales, Australia
- Coordinates
- 33.00°S 148.26°E
- Since
- 1961
- On the map
- Show me
The sky from here
Measured at these coordinates the sky is zone 3: rural transition, which is Bortle 3–4 and a naked-eye limit of about magnitude 6.2–7.0. The Milky Way is clearly there but loses its detail near the horizon. Light domes are obvious in several directions.
Of the 110 Messier objects, 38 are an unaided-eye target from a sky this dark, 106 are comfortable in 10×50s and 106 in a 130mm reflector. You would have to get roughly 7 km south-east before the sky reaches Bortle 2.
Every night of the year reaches full astronomical darkness at this latitude; the Sun always gets its eighteen degrees below the horizon, which places much further from the equator cannot say.
The centre of the galaxy climbs to 86° at its best — high enough that the summer Milky Way is genuinely three-dimensional rather than a band low in the south. Of the 110 Messier objects, none are circumpolar and 5 never rise.
Butterfly Cluster, Ptolemy's Cluster and Southern Pinwheel pass close to the zenith from this latitude — an object at the zenith is being seen through the least air it will ever be seen through, and the difference against the same object low in the south is not subtle.
Against that, Bode's Galaxy and Cigar Galaxy never clear the horizon here at all. No amount of aperture or patience changes that; the only remedy is to travel.
Read at 33.00°S 148.26°E. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
In the news
Nearby
Questions
What part of the sky never rises at Murriyang?
Everything north of declination +57°. From 33.0°S that is a cap 33° in radius centred on the north celestial pole, which is 8.1% of the whole celestial sphere. It is out of reach permanently rather than seasonally: no time of year and no instrument brings it above the horizon. The matching 8.1% around the south celestial pole is the same geometry inverted, and never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Murriyang get?
From about 6 hours 15 minutes at the thin end of the year, near 21 December, up to 11 hours 5 minutes around 21 June. The measure is astronomical darkness — the Sun a full eighteen degrees under — not simply the hours between sunset and sunrise. Unlike sites further from the equator, no part of the year here is written off entirely.
When is the Milky Way best from Murriyang?
Around 17 June, when the galactic centre crosses the meridian at local midnight — and because this is a southern site, that is also midwinter, with the longest and darkest nights of the year underneath it. The brightest part of the Milky Way reaches its highest point on the best nights available, rather than during a summer that will not go dark. That coincidence is most of the reason the world's large optical observatories are in the southern hemisphere.
How far is Murriyang from the other sites on this map?
Warrumbungle National Park is the nearest thing to it here — 203 km to the north. The nearest other observatory is Siding Spring Observatory, 206 km to the north. These are straight-line distances over the surface, not driving distances, and in this part of the world the two can differ considerably.