100 Hours of Astronomy at Sydney Observatory

100 hours of Astronomy Part 1 by Toner Stevenson – plenty of astronomy despite the cloud! More to come Sunday night.

The notes of saxophone and strings playing ‘starry starry night, paint your colours …” and spectacular images of the night sky large and bold on the old wall of the cottage created the most amazing ambience on Observatory Hill on Saturday night April 4. Visitors really got into the swing of things and comments such as ‘it was incredible ‘ were to be heard as they emerged from the 3D Theatre experience they had helped create using the new interactive tool. In the planetarium astronomy guide, Thea, intrigued the audience with stories of the southern cross while in the North Dome the robotic telescope was made to strut its stuff and on the front lawn there was practical workshop on using binoculars and small telescopes at home.

Any of the 120 visitors would agree with me in saying the 100 hours program was loads of astronomy even though we could not see any stars in the sky.

100 hours of Astronomy Part 2 by Geoffrey Wyatt. What a wonderful night! Clear skies gave the 90 visitors on Sunday April 5, great views of the Moon, Saturn and star clusters through the main North dome telescope and a large portable one in the yard along with laser guided binocular tours. Music with Panache again accompanied the stars wit some very entertaining Jazz. The 3-D theatre specialist program “Observatory 3-D” developed by Dr Paul Payne was simply brilliant and put the controls into the guests hands.

The International Year of Astronomy is shaping up to be lots of fun! What’s next?