Você sabia? Você conhece o "The Dish"?
24/07/2019
Você sabia?
Que em 1969, devido à sua estratégica posição geográfica, a grande antena australiana "The Dish" (Parkes Radio Telescope), localizada numa fazenda de ovelhas, foi o único equipamento de telecomunicação do mundo, capaz de trazer à humanidade as imagens e sons do primeiro passo de Neil Armstrong em outro corpo celeste?
Col Maybury, Presidente da Sociedade Astronômica de Hunter / Austrália, visitou o "The Dish" 50 anos depois que a enorme antena enviou os sinais de TV e rádio de Armstrong e Aldrin da Lua, para uma perplexa platéia de 600 milhões de pessoas, que assistiram ao redor do mundo.
Foto: Col Maybury (0427 889 653), Presidente da Sociedade Astronômica de Hunter / Austrália.
Leia esse interessante e histórico artigo abaixo:
THE DISH AND MY PART IN ITS HISTORY. - por Col Maybury / Austrália.
Foto: Roy Billings, the The 1969 Mayor of Parkes in the movie ”THE DISH.”
Foto: Ao fundo o verdadeiro "The Dish" ,e a frente, a tela de projeção do filme "The Dish", que revive a importante façanha da grande antena em 1969.
A PILGRIMAGE TO THE RADIO TELESCOPE, THE DISH, AT PARKES.
We drove to The Dish at Parkes, John and I. 1,204 kms, 12 hours driving time at a fuel rate of exactly 7.0 litres per 100 kilometres.
50 years since that massive antenna had beamed the TV and radio signals of Armstrong on the Moon into the amazed consciousness of 600 million people watching around the world.
Then and still now it was mankind’s most amazing technical feat. As President Kennedy had prophesied, “Before the decade is out we will put a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth.” And they did. I watched it with my Dad Jim Maybury, he was born before mankind’s first powered flight.
It was the Dish that did it and now we came in our thousands, elderly people mostly, with grandchildren in tow. The men with an aura about them of being in a cathedral.
This Dish set in a sheep field had done us proud.
This 64 metre across precision beast that can slew at 15 degrees per minute, that can pick up the radio whispers of stars and galaxies billions of light years out there, it’s normal “ day job,”but in 1969 it was the only piece of equipment in the world capable of bringing to humanity the images and sound of Armstrong’s first step onto another celestial body. As it happened.
For me the highlight was the showing of the Australian movie The Dish a poignant comedy of mistakes and exaggerations but triumphant in the end as those precious signals came through.
The spectacular blow up screen was dwarfed by the huge monolithic dish behind and the ceremonies began with the Mayor of Parkes making himself known on the podium just in front of the screen, but he was interrupted by a raucous voice from the crowd. An agitated small and bustling Roy Billings ran to the stage.
“You are not the Mayor of Parkes, “ Roy said, I’m the Mayor of Parkes.” So he was in the movie. And so began a fake slapstick fight with flailing hands and arms till the imposter was ejected from the stage and a triumphant Roy Billings introduced HIS film and his pivotal role as the then Mayor of Parkes, progenitor of THE DISH.
The next day we toured the controls high up inside the monolith and talked to the experts who maintained and operated this amazing machine.
Then the long drive home, tired, but supremely happy that we had shared both the original and now the 50th anniversary of that, Man on the Moon.
I can’t wait for the Centennial showing and hope that Roy Billings will be there.
Col Maybury 0427 889 653.
Foto: Alguns dos controles originais do "The Dish".
