Last Photos - The Dish

[den]

210 feet across, 1000 tons over the azimuth track. In 1969 it was the largest telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. But what's it doing in a sheep paddock?

Comments

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

Next time you're in Sydney, try and stop by Dover Heights. There's a memorial (http://outreach.atnf.csiro.au/about/history/doverheights/) there to the old station that was home to the hole-in-the-ground antennae (http://www.atnf.csiro.au/news/newsletter/oct01/wayne_figure2.jpg) (where a couple of Aussie blokes, using nothing but a shovel, some chicken wire and a scrounged radio mast, managed to discover the Galactic equivalent of Greenwich: Sagittarius A (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A)).

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

I knew nothing about this! Time for a visit!

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

It's one of my stock "boring people senseless with astronomy trivia" stories; I'll inflict the full details of it on you if we ever meet up.

There was a New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg17924125.600) story about it a couple of years ago...

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

And I can offer a place to stay that's a 25 minute bus ride from the city and guaranteed to feed you well.

[oceansedge.livejournal.com]

*smiles* and the best scones for miles

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Been there, for SETI... there were still a few faded NASA trailers leftover from Apollo. The sheep there are a nuisance IMO, I once found my car completely surrounded by a flock, unable to escape except by gently bumping them.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

A really nice Cafe has been built there since then. They get 120,000 visitors a year now that the movie has been screened and people needed to eat. It's a jolly good feed! (And only an hour from my house.)

[azhreia.livejournal.com]

(squints hard, trying to discern if the painted "wicket" is still visible in the centre of the dish.)

some of my favourite lines:

".. he sounded like he was in the next room"
"... I believe that's got to be a felony, impersonating someone in orbit"
"halt! who goes there?" "baaaa!"
"I haven't done the moon landing, miss" "thank god"
"... and then the martians will come out and shoot everyone with their lasers!"

and I love the props.
- those orange cups with the pearlescent sheen that EVERYONE had in the 60s, and which still persist in community centre kitchens to this day.
- the hillman
- that horrible dress (possibly made by Osti) that everyone's mother wore in the late 60s. the back of my mother's came into very brief contact with a soldering iron and melted into a burning polyester lump that fortunately missed her skin as it melted into a puddle on the floor. The dress was ruined.
- the compact fairlane.

[jamesb]

You can stop squinting ... It's not there.



The secondary commentary track on the R4 DVD goes into detail on the props, and talks about things like the cups and the dresses.

[azhreia.livejournal.com]

ah, I must admit, I haven't listened to the commentary - my dvd causes problems when it is played - the stupid disk gets stuck in the machine 9 times out of 10, and I have to physically turn the machine upside down to get it out again.

once, even that wasn't enough, and I had to take the dvd player apart - whereon I discovered that for the entire time I'd had it, since it had left the factory, it had had a test dvd stuck in it, displaced somehow and just "resting" on top of the machinery towards the back. naturally it was scuffed and scratched and unplayable by the time I retrieved it. I hoped when I removed that, that my Dish dvd wouldn't stick, but alas it still does. and even does so in my second dvd player, a more recent model.