Introduction

Sydney Observatory is a museum of astronomy and a public observatory. It is Australia's oldest existing observatory and is now a branch of the Powerhouse Museum, the largest museum in the southern hemisphere. With 65,000 visitors each year, the observatory is popular with the public. Visitors can come during the day to see exhibits and audiovisuals and in the evenings on telescope viewing sessions. They can also take part in school holiday workshops, adult education courses or a telescope-making course. In addition, many school groups come along during the school terms to extend the astronomical knowledge of their students. Other professional services provided by the observatory include an annual guidebook with up-to-date information for the sky as seen from Sydney and an astronomical information service for the public and the media.

In this paper we will mainly discuss selected aspects of our educational activities, exhibitions and equipment, highlighting recent developments in the 1990s.

Recent Innovations in Education

Open Nights

A maximum of only 45 people can be accommodated at any one time in one of our regular evening sessions. During school holidays this is nowhere near enough to meet the demand. When there is a major astronomical event, we like to give more people a chance to look through our telescopes. At these times we organise open nights at which up to 1 000 people can attend.

Special open nights have been held to view lunar eclipses, a favourable opposition of Mars and the ring plane passage of Saturn. During the collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter we held six open nights, each attracting over 1 000 people.