On the evening of Wednesday 7th June, (the third attempt), Merrin students and their families finally had their wishes granted and the weather decided to be kind.

It wasn't just the weather that threatened our evening, our plans were almost scuppered by colds and 'flu' amongst the Canterbury Astronomical Society (CAS) volunteers. Fortunately, the 'stars aligned' and the CAS made a final request to their members and we ended up with lots of CAS volunteers so that almost all of the telescopes were available to view the night sky. 

The chilly evening began, as the sky darkened, with a drive down the West Coast Road to West Melton, from there we headed towards the Waimakariri and away from the light pollution of towns to Bells Rd. Gathering at the Observatory there was a tangible sense of anticipation with 85 students and their families eagerly waiting for the chance to look up to the heavens. We divided into two groups and were given two talks, one about the Observatory (see the pictures) and the second, a general introduction to the night sky which was done outside. During this time we learned about the history of the Observatory and found that there are two Southern Crosses, the Southern Cross and also a 'False' Southern Cross! We also saw our brightest star neighbour - Sirius (the Dog Star) and learned that the third brightest star we see is called Bellatrix - can anyone spot a literary connection? 

 Once these introductions were completed we had the chance to walk around the different telescopes and under the guidance of the expert volunteers view different areas of the night sky.  We had a brilliantly bright moon on this particular evening which meant the viewing of Jupiter and Saturn was especially good.  Both of these planets are just dots in the night sky but, with the telescopes you could see the beautiful bands on Jupiter and three of its moons; Io, Ganymede and Callisto.  Saturn is such a familiar planet with its famous rings however, to actually see the rings through the telescopes was extraordinary.  We also saw a 'globular cluster' which looks like a tiny blurry star when viewed with the naked eye and in fact turns out to be 15,000 stars all closely grouped - possibly around a black hole.  It is a long way away - 1000's of lightyears away.  One of the favourite telescope views near the Southern Cross was the Jewel Box: a compact collection of different coloured stars once described as "a clutch of diamonds with a single ruby".  To cap it all was the moon which was almost full and could be seen with incredible detail, the thousands of craters on the surface unchanged for 100's of millions of years.   

During the course of the evening the Merrin students walked around using hushed, excited whispers and demonstrated all the values of our school perfectly.  It was a pleasure being out with our community on such a perfect evening for star gazing. 

 (Note: The reason there are not more images was because of the need for our eyes to adjust to night time viewing - 10 to 15 minutes, and phone screens and camera flashes would make it too difficult to see the stars properly).