Dressed in the season’s fashion, Julia Milner cuts an alien figure herself, among its banks of dials and monitors. But the observatory is close to her heart: she and her husband, Yuri Milner, are the founders of Breakthrough Listen, a global astronomical programme that searches for evidence of civilizations beyond Earth. Julia is drawn to a great dish as an aesthetic object, a unique monument of space-age architecture; and she is captivated by the question that it asks: Are we alone in the universe? Or do we have cosmic siblings?

Parkes has historical significance: it was the telescope which received the first signals from Apollo’s successful moon-landing on July 20, 1969. Should Breakthrough Listen’s quest succeed, the dish will no doubt achieve an even higher fame. For now, though, the methodical search continues. With a deep whirring that breaks the control room silence, the telescope moves into a new position, training itself onto another distant galaxy in search of faraway worlds—homes, perhaps, to alien cultures, with their own great works of science and beauty. 

Photography by Steven Chee | Styling by  Jess Pecoraro | Location: Parkes Observatory, New South Wales, Australia