On the trail of space exploration history in Australia, from Neil Armstrong’s ‘one small step’ to Aboriginal astronomy and Uranus’ rings
- Australia’s clear skies and low population make it ideal for space observatories, and its communications stations played a part in space exploration history
- Tourists can visit the Perth Observatory where they discovered Uranus’ rings, and experience the ‘sky stories’ of Aboriginals, Australia’s first astronomers
In the densely forested hills that overlook Perth, Western Australia, a cluster of white domes contrasts starkly with the city’s famously blue skies.
A rumble rolls through this idyllic setting, and the roof of one of the domes cracks open, allowing the telescope within to be trained on the midday sun. What it captures is relayed to a television screen in front of me, in the dome’s control room.
“You can see sun spots here and here,” says Matt Woods. With clicks of a computer mouse, he gradually increases the telescope’s exposure length until we can both make out clouds of gas around the edge of the sun. “Pretty cool, huh,” he remarks.
Woods is tour administrator at the Perth Observatory. A genial man, and fount of astronomical knowledge, he leads regular tours of this facility, the oldest of its kind in Western Australia. It was opened 125 years ago in West Perth, which is now a busy inner city area, before being relocated in 1966 to Bickley, a semirural suburb 25km (15.5 miles) east of Perth’s skyscrapers.
Known for parks, hiking trails, small wineries and old-school Aussie pubs, the Perth hills feel more distant from the city centre than maps show. This space and serenity lures many day trippers. It also makes it a fine perch from which to gaze beyond this state, country, planet and even solar system, deep into the galaxy.
Australia’s clear skies and low population density make it one of the best countries from which to observe space. Tourists can delve into the history of such endeavours at sites across the nation, from observatories to science museums, space communication stations and rocket launch facilities (see below).
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In late June, tourists flooded the modest town of East Arnhem, in the Northern Territory, to watch the country’s first Nasa space launches since 1995. The three lift-offs from the Arnhem Space Centre, near to which is a viewing deck for spectators, were part of a project to allow scientists working for the US space agency to gather data on the evolution of the cosmos.
Australia has played a key role in dozens of other major space exploration and observation projects.
In 1970, an explosion rocked Nasa’s Apollo 13 lunar mission, resulting in the now-iconic transmission “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” Australian scientists at Parkes Observatory, in New South Wales, tracked the damaged spacecraft and helped avert disaster.
Even more significant is Australia’s role in the 1969 moon landing. The footage of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon were transmitted to more than 600 million viewers from Australia’s Nasa-operated Honeysuckle Creek tracking station, which is near national capital Canberra and was the star of the comedy-drama movie The Dish (2000).
Perth Observatory, too, has had a hand in key achievements. As Woods and I stand beneath another, larger telescope, called the Lowell, he explains how in 1977, a team of Australian scientists helped discover the rings of Uranus.
Those researchers wanted to observe the atmosphere of Uranus as the planet passed in front of a star called SAO 158687. That spectacle would be visible only from the southwest of Australia and the Indian Ocean. This geographical advantage prompted Nasa to send its Kuiper Airborne Observatory to Perth and to ask Perth Observatory to share its recordings from the Lowell dome.
Scientists at the Perth Observatory saw a light from Uranus appear and then disappear as the star passed near the planet. This was also noted by the Kuiper Observatory. Soon afterwards, the Australian scientists were shocked to discover they had made history – the obstruction to the light they’d observed had been caused by a previously unknown ring system around Uranus.
The glee with which Woods relays this tale is infectious. He describes himself as a “huge fan of astronomy” who feels “very proud of what’s been accomplished here at Perth Observatory”.
The Lowell telescope was one of six funded by Nasa around the world, to help execute its International Planetary Patrol Program. In 1986, Perth Observatory used it to produce 10 per cent of all the ground-based positioning work carried out on the most famous comet in history, Halley’s.
The facility has also discovered 30 supernovas and 35 minor planets. However, it’s been superseded by more modern observatories, and is running a public appeal to help fund restoration of its Lowell telescope so that scientific activities can be enhanced.
If it were a busier observatory, though, visitors would probably not get the access they currently receive. Participants on both night and day tours are allowed inside the two main telescope domes, as well as the museum and astronomy library.
The two-hour night sky tour (A$50/US$35 per person) is particularly popular, Woods says, because guides use a range of telescopes to show participants some of the most spectacular sights in the sky, such as nebulas, star clusters and dying stars.
Tours begin in the observatory’s ageing but informative museum. Displayed are a range of historic astronomy instruments, a 189kg fragment of the 1983 Mundrabilla meteorite and an original copy of Atlas Coelestis, the first star atlas ever printed, back in 1729.
Its exhibits, and Woods’ insight, teach visitors about the observatory’s work, which ranges from timekeeping to meteorology, seismology, surveying and optical astronomy.
As I learn during my tour with Woods, though, Australia’s connection to the stars extends back thousands of years, long before modern science was employed.
At the rear of the observatory, in a circular, open-air concrete structure, is Worl Wangkiny, which in a local Aboriginal language means “sky stories”. Inside this art project, which was unveiled in 2019, I encounter a bounding emu, its wings clasped tightly to its sides as it sets a course for the moon, alongside constellations and other native animals.
The evocative mural, which covers an entire wall of the structure – a telescope dome that was abandoned part of the way through construction – was painted by Aboriginal Australian artists.
Worl Wangkiny is decorated with other paintings, and is connected to the observatory car park by a curling walkway that represents a mythic path to the moon. In the book The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders Read the Stars (2022), Duane Hamacher, associate professor of cultural astronomy at the University of Melbourne, writes that ancient Aboriginal Australians were experts at observing the sun, moon and stars to inform their navigation, calendars and weather predictions.
The universe, as observable by the human eye, inspired the key legends and beliefs of Aboriginal Australians. Collectively known as the “Dreamtime”, these tales and pearls of wisdom are the foundation of Aboriginal Australian culture, explaining how humans and their environment were shaped.
That fascination with the cosmos, and its countless secrets, still exists across Australia. As well as contributing to the global scientific effort, the Perth Observatory and the country’s other space-related sites also make for noteworthy tourist attractions.
Six other top space tourist attractions in Australia
Deep Space Communication Complex (Canberra)
About 35km southwest of the national capital, this huge facility has a visitor centre as well as the southern hemisphere’s largest antenna complex, which can be inspected from a car park fitted out with information boards.
Inside the visitor centre – which is yet to reopen to the public following its Covid-19-enforced closure – is a fragment from the moon and an array of spacecraft models.
Australian Space Discovery Centre (Adelaide)
The headquarters of the Australian Space Agency, the nation’s equivalent of Nasa, is in Adelaide, and on site is this modern facility that explains emerging space technologies to the visiting public and outlines Australia’s past and current roles in space monitoring and exploration.
Powerhouse Museum (Sydney)
This large museum in downtown Sydney has a permanent exhibition called “Space”. This includes a Zero Gravity Space Lab inside which visitors can experience the illusion of weightlessness.
Parkes Observatory (Parkes)
About 280km west of Sydney lies this iconic observatory, which transmitted to the world the extraordinary footage of American astronaut Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon. It is open to the public.
Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum (Carnarvon)
On the central coast of Western Australia, this museum celebrates Carnarvon’s role in manned space programmes and satellite communications. The town’s huge satellite dish, erected in 1966, was used by Nasa for tracking, but has not been operational for more than 30 years.
Charleville Cosmos Centre (Charleville)
In this small town 700km west of Brisbane, the Charleville Cosmos Centre offers visitors access to telescopes with which to peruse the stars, and hosts night talks around a fire pit that delve into Aboriginal Australian astronomy.
The government opened the centre here in 2003 to take advantage of the clear skies and lack of light pollution in the area.
