Welcome to the Mopra Telescope
The Mopra Telescope is a 22-m single-dish radio telescope located at the edge of the Warrumbungle Mountains near Coonabarabran, about 450 km north-west of Sydney. It is operated by CSIROs Astronomy and Space Science division, as are the Parkes Telescope and the Australia Telescope Compact Array near Narrabri in north-west New South Wales. A fourth radio telescope, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, is also being developed by CSIRO at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the mid-west of Western Australia. Collectively, CSIRO's radio astronomy observatories are known as the Australia Telescope National Facility, with the facility supporting Australia's research in radio astronomy.
Mopra is situated at a latitude and longitude of -31.2678, 149.0997 and an elevation of 860m. The telescope is primarily used for 3-mm spectroscopy and VLBI experiments.
A severe bushfire on Sunday January 13, 2013 burned a large region near Coonbarabran including the Mopra and Siding Spring Observatories. Fortunately, the telescope itself and the key data-taking equipment were spared by the fire, but mains power was cut and the on-site building suffered significant damage. The telescope was returned to operations in May 2013. See the Current Issues page for more details.
Mopra Observing Guides
- Information for Observers All the information you need to prepare your proposal and your observing run
- UPDATED MAR 2014 Mopra Current Issues Check here before starting your observing run
- Mopra Remote Observing Find out how to set up remote observing sessions
- Mopra Quick Reference Handbook (QRH) Also check the "Current Issues" page please.
- Telescope Control System User Interface (TCS UI) Manual
ATNF Observing Information
- ATNF Observing Schedules
- Applying for time on ATNF Telescopes
- ATNF Accommodation Booking Form
- Australia Telescope Online Archive
Observing Tools
- Observability charts plotter
- Beam position mapper to verify your maps. DO NOT USE UNLESS YOU ARE THE OBSERVER IN CHARGE!
- mops_vis: The tools for finding your central frequency and zoom window numbers. (requires wish, runs on linux/cygwin/osx)
- Sensitivity calculator (2005 versions)
- Sensitivity calculator 2013 version (now includes MOPS Broadband 1k channel mode)
- Schedule File Tool: Position Switching v5.0
- On-The-Fly Mapping v6.0 Schedule File Tool, supports fast mapping and graphical zoom window selection. If you have trouble with the new Schedule File Tool, here's the old one: On-The-Fly Mapping v5.3
- Velocity to frequency calculator
- Catalogue & Monitoring of SiO masers
- Coordinate Calculator COORD
- Submit a Fault Report
Data Reduction & Calibration
- Map making tutorial. An brief tutorial outlining how to reduce Mopra mapping data using livedata, gridzilla, kvis, miriad and to clean it up and present it pretty with IDL.
- ASAP - ATNF Spectral Analysis Package An ASAP-GUI interface has been developed by Cormac Purcell and is available for download
- Livedata/Gridzilla - On-the-fly Mapping Analysis Package
Mopra Monitoring Information
- Augmented reality view in TOAD explained
- TOAD (ATNF external access) Bookmark the new URL!
- TOAD (ATNF internal access) Bookmark the new URL!
- Weather
- Mopra Webcam
- Mopra SkyCam
- Lightning
- Select monitor points
- MAPS (ATNF internal only)
- Impending CLOUDSAT passes. Avoid pointing near zenith with 3mm on axis during CLOUDSAT passes!
Local Mopra Observatory Information
Modified: Peter Mirtschin (06 Apr 2021)