The Parkes Observatory is a radio telescope observatory in New South Wales, Australia, located 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of the town of Parkes. It was one of several radio antennae used to receive live television images of the Apollo 11 Moon landing on 20–21 July 1969. Its scientific contributions over the decades has led the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to describe it as "the most successful scientific instrument ever built in Australia" after 50 years of operation. The observatory, which opened in 1961, is run by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), an independent Australian federal government agency, as part of the Australia Telescope National Facility network of radio telescopes. It is frequently operated together with other CSIRO radio telescopes to form a very-long-baseline interferometry array.
This picture, taken in 1969, shows the Parkes Observatory's main 64-metre (210 ft) diameter radio telescope dish, around the time that it received transmissions from Apollo 11, with a crescent moon visible in the background. The photograph is part of CSIRO's ScienceImage archive.Photograph credit: CSIRO