Space Place upgrade opens up new frontiers
By Colin Smillie | October 9, 2024
Colin Smillie is Experience Wellington’s science public programmes manager.
If you’re someone who remembers when Pluto was a planet, you’ll understand how rapidly our knowledge of the cosmos is expanding and changing.
We also have an ever-growing understanding about the importance of connecting to the whenua/land we are on and the people who came before us, and we’re thrilled to reflect all of this in the upgrade of our central galleries at Te Ara Whānui ki te Rangi/Space Place.
Space Place at Carter Observatory, near the Upland Rd entrance to Wellington’s Botanical Garden, shares the stories of the skies above Aotearoa through multimedia exhibits, interactive galleries, stargazing through our historic Thomas Cooke telescope, and a digital, full-dome planetarium.
We now uniquely connect visitors to the skies above Wellington and proudly explore mātauranga Māori/Māori knowledge alongside western astronomy, acknowledging that this is the same sky that guided our tūpuna/ancestors to this land across the Pacific. Visitors to our new interactive galleries begin their journey here in Wellington, exploring how people navigated here, how to live in tandem with nature, through maramataka/the Māori lunar calendar, and how our knowledge of our place in space is ever-evolving.
A guiding focus has been the whakatauki/proverb, Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua, or I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on the past. From a te ao Māori perspective, everything you know and have experienced in the past can be seen, so the past is in front of you. The future is definitively unknown and therefore cannot be seen and is behind you.
Likewise in space, when we observe objects further away from us, we are witnessing events that took place further back in time, almost like a time machine. The light from Tamanuiterā/the sun takes about eight minutes to reach Papatūānuku/Earth. So, we “see” the sun as it was eight minutes ago. The photons that hit our eyes or our technology are an echo of the past. The further away our instruments can see, the further back in time we can explore.
Our new interactive touch screens allow visitors to get to know the land from which they gaze up at the stars, as we bring the cosmos down to the human scale. You can discover stories of people who have left their mark in astronomy, historic and contemporary navigators, and those using maramataka in their daily lives. Delve deeper into the significance and importance of the Puanga star and Matariki, learning how people mark the Māori New Year across Aotearoa.
Visitors can scroll through the weird and wonderful stories of our “wandering stars” ‒ the planets of our solar system. Dig into the science of our celestial neighbourhood (did you know the surface temperature of Venus is high enough to melt lead?) and find out how we know what we know, from rovers criss-crossing Mars, to crashing spacecraft on to the surface of Mercury. Visitors can find ways to get involved in global citizen science projects, like JunoCam where people share their images of Jupiter and contribute ideas for what science the Juno spacecraft should focus on next.
New discoveries are being made every day, and the rate of scientific space exploration is growing exponentially. It seems that many of the things we knew a decade ago have changed. Spacecraft orbiting our neighbouring planets are relaying new discoveries and expanding our understandings all the time, showing us active lava lakes on a moon of Jupiter and cryogeysers erupting from a moon of Saturn, and distant exoplanets are being discovered every day. Our new digital modules are deliberately easy to update, so when the next supernova of knowledge arrives, we can bring the people of Wellington along with us ‒ and we’re raising funds to introduce more hands-on experiences.
Our vision is to establish Space Place as a leading and inspiring space learning hub that engages generations of visitors. We are raising funds to introduce more hands-on experiences, making this vision a reality. Learn more about our mission and help shape the future of space education visit.
We can learn a lot by looking at the night sky above us, and we want to help our visitors connect more directly to the skies under which they live and think critically about the world around us. There is always more to learn.