Winter is one of the best times for stargazing in our great southern land!
Thank you to Matt Woods for sharing with us in this Newsletter the many sights to see in the sky over the next few months.
After last year’s lockdown, not to mention a couple this year, it’s heartening to regularly welcome so many visitors to Perth Observatory. On top of our Winter Night Tours three times a week, we greet dozens of eager visitors to Perth Hills for our daytime guided tours every Sunday. As well as showing off our majestic Meridian, Astrograph and Calver Telescopes, visitors take in our beautiful surroundings and our various imaginative fairy doors. There’s no need to book to join us on a day tour every Sunday for stories of the observatory from our Mt Eliza days, our move to Bickley in 1966, what we’ve been doing since then, and what’s in the pipeline for Perth Observatory.
In the last edition of the Newsletter, you read that the State Government promised the observatory $1.6m funding to support our general operations and expand our STEM education programs. Since then, the real work has begun!
The POVG board is busy consulting stakeholders, consolidating identified needs and preparing budgets for the 1st Year’s Budget Submission.
Our STEM work doesn’t end with astronomy, either! We’re currently conducting a Bird Census of the Perth Observatory site. The first of these 20-minute observations identified 11 species and recognises many others that will be identified over time. We’ll make collected data from this bird census available through our website, as will other data including the results of a reptile census.
There’s always a lot happening at Perth Observatory!
Thank you for supporting Perth’s oldest observatory, I hope we’ll see you soon.
