Outreach Update

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue43 1–31 August 2023

We are in the final stages of setting up our partnership arrangements with Mulligan’s Flat/WildBark. Other areas of the ANU are very supportive of the initiative, and the finer details are being worked through. The goal is to have the cafe and visitor centre open in December. As part of this, catering will soon be available for our functions, workshops, and events - before the cafe is open. Likewise, if you are hosting a workshop, writing retreat, or anything else that you may normally use the Common Room for, you can also book their facilities free of charge. This means that we will have two places to host our functions and have them catered, while also not having to pay for room hire, saving us money.

Last month’s Public Astronomy Night had beautiful weather and a large crowd of about 1500 people to go with it. The Rotary Club of Ginninderra is now handling the parking for us, which is a win-win for everyone. We have three more public nights planned for this year, including two during Science Week - 12 and 18 August, with 22 September being the last one. 12 August will be catering specifically for groups who may have limitations.  We will be using cameras from a grant we received to allow people with physical limitations, who may not be able to look through the telescope, to see it on a screen.  We will also have Auslan interpreters for those in the hard-of-hearing community.

Also for Science Week, we will be running a Science fiction movie night + discussion on 17 August, as well as running activities in Cooleman Court on Sunday the 13th, and the Canberra Centre on Sunday the 20th.

Despite school holidays limiting the number of schools visiting Canberra, we still had nearly 20 groups bringing 600 students up to the mountain. In August, we have a school booking every weekday, with most of the days having multiple groups.  The volume has now reached a point that with our partnership with Mulligans Flat, we will start running educational astronomy programs there too, to meet the demand.  This means more work for the RSAA students who run the programs as well as increasing our ability to reach more students who visit Canberra.

We had a number of private nights in July, despite a few periods of bad weather. Thankfully, the clearer nights we have been having means that we can get a lot more of these groups through as the waiting-list for a night is long.  We are already taking bookings through to the end of the year and into next year as people plan their travel to Canberra.

Brad Tucker