Outreach Update

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue47 1–31 December 2023

In November and December, we hosted/will host over 900 students from 23 different schools/groups. This included, for the first time, a stargazing event at Mulligans Flat, where students from the National Indigenous Summer School did stargazing with us as well as a wildlife tour with guides from Mulligans Flat.

As we approach the end of the year, we can reflect on the busy year that 2023 has been for outreach and look forward to 2024.

In 2023, we had about 9,250 students visit Mt Stromlo for school outreach programs from over 200 different schools/groups, coming from every state and territory.  Even more will be visiting us in 2024 with 150 groups already booked in, and many more expected.

We will start running school stargazing programs at Mulligans Flat with the first groups already booked in! We will also run / assist with school experiences at Lanyon Homestead, that will be available to book from March next year.

Our private nights have never been more popular.  We hosted over 400 different groups for stargazing in 2023, with more than 75% of these visitors coming from interstate and internationally . However, the requests we received far exceeded our demand, with nearly 2000 groups requesting visits.

The ACT government is already looking at ways to fund new telescope infrastructure at Mulligans Flat to host groups out there as well.  Plus, we will see the opening of 50” Telescope Farm in 2024.

Also in 2023, we resumed our popular public nights and luckily, for the most part, the weather cooperated.  Our dates are already set for 2024:

19 April
10 May
14 June
12 July
9 August
6 September
7 September Open Day

In 2024, we will also run public evenings - with talks, dinner, a homestead tour, and stargazing at Lanyon Homestead.  The scheduled public evenings at Lanyon Homestead are:

Lanyon Nights 2024:
15 March
12 April
17 May
21 June
19 July
16 August
13 September
11 October

And finally, while we await the final bits on the cafe to be finalised, we can expect to see the cafe and Visitor Centre open in 2024.  We have already been developing new exhibits. 

In addition to the new experiences at Mulligans, we are co-developing many other programs with them including a series of school holiday programs in January - 10 , 17, and 25 January.

Plus, there will be many more special events to come in 2024 including the Mt Stromlo Open Day on 7 September. 

Image: 74inch Telescope at sunset. Credit: Cristy Roberts