Lewis Gordon founded Coonabarabran in 1859. The area had already been developed by a government expedition in 1817 and the Aboriginal people , the Kamilaroi, had lived in the area for 7,500 years. Coonabarabran is the gateway to Warrumbungle National Park and the Pilliga Forest and there is a tourist office. There are motels, hotels, restaurants and caravan parks in the village. There is also a mineral collection, the Crystal Kingdom, and a golf club.
At Coonabarabran there is a star observatory with a telescope 3.9 meters in diameter, the largest telescope in Australia, the Siding Spring Observatory on Siding Spring Mountain in Warrumbungle National Park. For astronomy students and astrophysicists at the Australian National University, there are 12 telescopes in the building on Siding Spring Mountain.
^ Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp.186 (English, 992 pp., Link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on August 28, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1979 MX 2 . Discovered 1979 June 25 by EF Helin and SJ Bus at Siding Spring. "
