The Greenwich Planetarium has been shut for a big old refurb, and while it might be exaggerating the case to say that this has left the city’s astronomers lacking anything to do with their time whatsoever, it is true that a fair number have been dragooned into helping out with Astronomers Take Over, a new temporary exhibition at the Maritime Museum.
It’s a very enjoyable experience: there are big, bright colourful guides to the heavens, ranging from jaw-dropping images of galaxies, to an in-depth look at the Mars landers, to a sort-of-cute mood board-style area looking at what the astronomers’ various inspirations were for getting into what I’m going to call ‘space stuff’ - they range from Helen Sharman to Captain Scarlet to sci-fi obsessed US prog band Coheed and Cambria.
It turns out that the ultimate interactive display… is a person
It’s all visually striking, but there’s no denying the USP here isn’t the displays but the people: there are lots of actual astronomers* roaming about, in fun NASA-ish boiler suits, giving demonstrations and generally on hand to answer questions. (*FWIW, I asked, and this means they all have astronomy degrees, not that all are technically astronomers by trade).
Their enthusiasm and knowledge are, of course, wonderful, but moreover, it’s just incredibly rare to go to any sort of exhibition and find large numbers of helpful staff on hand and heavily involved. It turns out that the ultimate interactive display… is a person. I spent some time grilling an astronomer vis-à-vis my incredulity that the Curiosity rover has just been on Mars happily operating away since 2012 (my questions were essentially a series of variants on ‘but what does it do all day?’).
There is also a lil’ pop-up planetarium about the same dimensions as a good-sized yurt that’s intended as a stopgap while the big planetarium is out of action. It is notably more lo-fi than the ‘proper’ one, and while I think the astronomer-led guides to the heavens staged on the hour are broadly the same (there are three different shows, two for younger kids), I certainly wouldn’t say that it’s crucial to pay the extra to watch it as part of your visit. But then again, who doesn’t love a planetarium?
