Observe and understand the moon

EVERYONE is being invited to come and explore the grandeur of the moon with help from the Ballarat Municipal Observatory and Museum as part of International Observe the Moon Night.

To acknowledge the event, staff are set to deliver two sessions on Saturday 14 September.

“Our night session will involve a tour of the old site which is 137 years old, a talk about the moon and its different dark and light spots,” said education officer Kirralee McLoughlin. “Hopefully it’ll be nice clear weather so we’ll be looking at the moon and other astronomical objects like the Jewel Box cluster and Alpha Centauri through our portable telescopes.

“Then the afternoon session will be more on a kid-level, and easier to understand the different features, phases, and changes of the moon like why you can see the moon during the day. “It’ll be more interactive and hands-on.”

Ballarat Municipal Observatory and Museum’s International Observe the Moon Night celebrations have been taking place non-consecutively for about half a decade.

Ms McLoughlin said the observatory and museum’s acknowledgement of the NASA-created event is one of their most popular in their calendar.

“It’s one of our top five busiest offerings,” she said. “We usually see about 30 people or so to this.

“Because the moon is so close, everyone seems to have that connection to space given everything else is so far away and hard to see.

“We want to give people an understanding of the closest thing in space. The moon’s really close and if you can understand something close it gives you that confidence to understand things a bit further from earth.”

Tickets range from $12 adult to free for toddlers aged two and under for the afternoon session, to between $35 adult and free for five-year-olds or younger for the evening session.

To book, visit the Ballarat Municipal Observatory and Museum’s events page on their website.

The afternoon session will run from 4pm followed by the evening session is at 6.30pm.