Hey
my name is dr. Jane Kaczmarek I'm an
astrophysicist here at the dish and we
are actually standing in front of the
sixty-four meter behemoth behind me and
today we're gonna take you on a little
bit of a tour to show you what goes on
inside the dish break it down layer by
layer and actually talk about what
happens at every single step along the
process of data coming from space
through my telescope
and then finally to me
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this is the observers room so if we ever
have a local observer here at parks and
they want to control the dish above them
they'll come to this room and they'll be
able to control the telescope through
these three screens it's also really
useful because we have this massive
screen that tells me where the telescope
is pointing it's hard sometimes to
figure out where you are looking on the
sky if you are inside of this huge
structure so we also have different
monitors that allow us to figure out
where exactly on the sky were pointing
or if for example we're pointing at the
Sun that would be terrible and this will
let me know
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so we're now in the second floor control
room here inside parks and you can see
around me there's a bunch of cables
there's a bunch of machines this room
here is actually where parts really made
its scientific mark in astronomy because
of this interface between the astronomer
and the data processing astronomers
throughout the last 50 years we're able
to actually get their hands dirty try
new techniques and able were able to
discover a whole new way of seeing the
universe
so we're now just gonna be running some
routine tests before we hand over to an
astronomer and it's about time that we
start tipping the dish
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there aren't many radio telescopes in
the world that have spiral staircase
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so we've now ascended the spiral
staircase and we're now inside of the
junction room it parks at this point
everything around us will be moving
except for this center column here back
when the dish was being designed and
built in the 50s and 60s there was no
telescope on earth that was powerful
enough to drive the dish with the
precision required for astronomy
research so Barnes Wallis of World War 2
fame not only designed the beautiful
pear loans that we see on the dish
surface he also thought of the master
equatorial mount that still drives parks
today and it still works and it's still
precise enough for us to do the science
that we do every day here at the dish so
we are now in the twister room and if
you take a look behind me you can kind
of understand why we call it that so as
the dish is turning around it's looking
at different objects of the sky you'll
see the different weave of cables switch
in this room so the cables here are
actually what limit how much the dish
can dance
so at any given time there are two
motors that are driving the dish around
and this is one of them it looks pretty
small and that's because it is pretty
small it's only 15 horsepower and the
reason that we're able to move such a
large structure with such small taller
motors is because of the big gearboxes
behind me they actually are able to take
that little bit of power and move the
very finely balanced instrument
so what really makes the telescope work
is a small team of dedicated staff
engineers technicians and astronomers
alike working 24/7 to keep the telescope
as relevant as ever as the dish
approaches its 60th anniversary in 2021
the science that's coming from the dish
is as important as it's ever been
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you