Old Melbourne Observatory: Jupiter and its Moons

A group of 15 students from the Melbourne centre went to the Old Melbourne Observatory to view the moons and storms of Jupiter... A very interesting night!

The heritage listed Old Melbourne Observatory is a beautiful building located in the Royal Botanic Gardens.

We saw a number of fairly large telescopes located there… some of which were considered quite advanced at the time in which they were built.

Scott was searching for life on Ganymede through one of the impressive telescopes:)... the designer of which actually used various parts from steam train engines to design the rotating mechanism beneath it.

The rooms had a very interesting acoustic effect, so if a person spoke at the other side of the room, you heard them amplified like they were standing right in front of you!

We thought it would make an excellent mantra room:)

Tim enjoys the rotating top of dome... which actually made it feel like the bottom was spinning instead. Very weird feeling!

A special telescope designed to view the spots solar flares on the Sun.

Me standing behind the Sun telescope. The image comes through this telescope is much too powerful to look at with the naked eye and burns paper instantly, so it is projected on to the wall behind it to see the solar flair and sunsopt activity.

Another impressive telescope... this time we used it to get a very up close view of other buildings in Melbourne.

The two in house astronomers tell us about how our eyes perceive the world, as well as the latest discoveries in astronomy.

An interesting astronomical clock that contains mercury at it's base which rises and falls to ensure it's accuracy of measurement irrespective of temperature variations in the air.

It was a very interesting night... and quite inspiring to go and explore things further in the Astral plane:)