BYO Death Ray: Mount Burnett Observatory Young Observer's Night

Our newest correspondent, Magnus Bock, aged 12, has this special report from the historic Mount Burnett Observatory just outside of Melbourne, Australia.

Hello, I’m Magnus Bock, Senior Labrat and Mount Burnett Observatory Member and I’m here to tell you about what I do at Mount Burnett.

Observing sun spots reflected onto paper from a telescope

Magnus and the Mount Burnett dome

Mount Burnett is an Observatory in the Dandenong Ranges, near Cockatoo. It used to be run by Monash University, but they decommissioned it and it started to fall apart. In 2010 a group of locals and astronomically-minded people got together to restore it and make it work again. There is a big telescope in the dome and several portable Dobsonian telescopes for members to use.

Last night I went to Mount Burnett Observatory’s Young Observer’s night. It was really fun but sadly it was the last one of the year. Here are some of the things we did:

• Had a picnic.
• Looked at the sun and moon.
• Normally we would also have a speaker, but not this week.

The aims of the Young Observers Group are:

• To teach astronomy in a fun way.
• To get kids interested in astronomy.
• To continue to improve the facilities of the Observatory.

Here is what some of the kids said about the program:

• “I really like everything."
• “I loved learning new things and looking at the planets."
• “I love how we get to come out here and look at the stars."

Junior observers is held at Mount Burnett Observatory from 7:30pm (earlier in winter) until 9:00pm every second Saturday. For more information go to our website. James Murray is the contact person for Young Observers and has lots of plans for next year.



Telescopic links:

• You don't ever, EVER, look directly at the sun, especially through a telescope. You will go blind. But, like Magnus, you can use a telescope to project an image of the sun onto a piece of paper, and you can stare at that piece of paper for as long as you want. Find out other ways to look at the sun without going blind from Stanford University.
• Did you know that The Great Melbourne Telescope, which is being restored at the Melbourne Observatory in the Royal Botanic Gardens, used to be one of the biggest telescopes in the world?

Thanks for telling us about your club Magnus. If you are part of an astronomy club or any kind of science club, tell us about it in the comments, or, better still, write an article about it and get it published right here on this website.