Murriyang

In the Wiradjuri Dreaming, Biyaami (Baiame) is a prominent creator spirit and is represented in the sky by the stars which also portray the Orion constellation. Murriyang represents the ‘Skyworld’ where Biyaami lives. The position of the Parkes 64m telescope is indicated by a white circle in the skyplot, and was co-named Murriyang by Wiradjuri Elder Dr Stan Grant Snr (AM) at a ceremony at Parkes on 8th November 2020.

Celestial Sphere

The globe represents the Celestial Sphere, represented here as an Orthographic projection, with cartographic Longitude and Latitude replaced by celestial J2000 Right Ascention and Declination positions, respectively. Objects displayed include Solar System objects (Sun, Moon and planets), plus Pulsars, as well as stars and galaxies observed by the Breakthrough Listen Initiative. The 1000 brightest galaxies seen by HIPASS are also shown. Pulsars are colour-coded according to their rotation period; red, blue and green represent periods of 1-10, 10-100 and 100+ milliseconds respectively. For the Breakthrough Listen sources, galaxies are colour-coded based on morphology, and stars are coded according to spectral colour, relative to the star Vega. Full details of the Breakthrough Listen sources of interest can be found here (PDF). The HIPASS galaxies are colour-coded according to their velocity, with white representing < 1400 km/s, grey 1400 - 2200 km/s and dark grey > 2200 km/s. Their size relates to the log of the HI mass.

You can click anywhere on the sphere and the globe will move to center on that position. Hovering the mouse over a "dot" will reveal some information about the object. With liveMode checked, the sphere will automatically move whenever the sky position as "seen" by the telescope changes.

The Milky Way

The Milky Way is depicted as a Mollweide projection of large-scale surveys done with Parkes and other observatories around the world. Instead of using J2000 as the coordinate system, Galactic coordinates are used with the center depicting the Galactic Center at longitude 0.0, degrees, latitude 0.0 degrees. The images come from the NASA LAMBDA site, available here..

Voyagers I and II

For more information on the location of the twin Voyager probes, go here.

Telescope Status

A live webcam image and operational status of the Parkes 64m antenna is shown underneath the galaxy image. The current receiver (frequency range) and coordinates (J2000, B1950, Galactic) are also shown. The white circles on the Celestial Sphere and Galactic image represent the current position of the antenna on the sky.