Space Place
Our Space Looks Different
What’s new at Space Place
We’ve had a space-lift. After months of hard mahi, we’re thrilled to share our new frontier with you. Read on for what’s new in our gallery spaces.
Mātauranga Māori
Our new displays connect you to the skies above Pōneke and how our nation’s first people used stars to navigate oceans. Learn about star paths in He Kaiārahi Guided Here and the wonders of Matariki in Puanga Matariki Our New Year.
Tūhura Module
What can you bring on a trip to the moon? Tamariki experience a slice of astronaut life in the recently refreshed space hub.
Launch Mission Control
Feel the rumble of a rocket launch with our revamped rocket display.
Aotearoa Astronomers
Learn about New Zealand’s contribution to space science through our new Space & Everyday Life display.
New Space Place Store
From Moon lamps to adopting stars, shop instore or online for all your space oddity needs.
Space Place Events
Find out about our ever-evolving line up of stellar events and unique experiences.
Need some space?
Space is the place for you next event. Check out our venue hire packages including birthday parties for your little explorer.
Space Place upgrade opens up new frontiers
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.
Space Place closing for renovations
Space Place closing for renovations
By Space Place | 19 July, 2024
We are excited to announce that our planetarium galleries will be undergoing renovations to refresh our exhibits and telescope room.
To allow for these improvements, Space Place will be closed from Monday 22 July to Wednesday 31 July. During this time there will be no gallery admissions, planetarium shows, or events.
Space Place will reopen partially on Thursday 1 August, with planetarium shows and events resuming but sections of the galleries remaining closed until Friday 6 September. During the partial opening period, visitors will receive discounted entry on planetarium shows (adults $11, concession and students $9, tamariki 4-16 $5, 0-3 free, family $29). Birthday parties will continue running at a 10% discount.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, and appreciate your understanding as we work to create an exciting new experience for our visitors.
Many thanks to Sargood Bequest and Pelorus Trust for supporting this exciting project. And a huge thank you to the Lion Foundation and Four Winds Foundation for making our recent foyer upgrades possible.
We can’t wait for our new galleries to open so we can share our love of space and science with all Pōneke.
Stay tuned for updates and sneak peeks of what’s to come!
Thank you for supporting Space Place.
Sincerely,
Space Place
[email protected]
+64 4 910 3140
Reach for the stars! Or maybe the exoplanets
Reach for the stars! Or maybe the exoplanets
By Grace Jacobs Corban
Planetarium shows at Space Place Te Ara Whānui ki te Rangi allow visitors to immerse themselves in new environments, like the surface of a distant planet, making impossible experiences real.
I’ve had the privilege of seeing how exciting space is for kids and adults and I love hearing about how people connect our planetarium shows to their lives, whether it’s how the night sky looks from their hometown or their thoughts on the possibility of life out there in the universe.
I worked as a Learning Specialist at Space Place for three years after I completed a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Physics at Victoria University Wellington and I moved into my current role as Visitor Experiences host last year when I was completing my Master of Science in Society.
I’ve always had a passion for space and I love sharing it with others. I’m excited to continue this through an internship at NASA starting later this month. This year the New Zealand Space Agency has provided six scholarships to postgraduate students to participate in three-month research projects at either the Ames Research Centre in Silicon Valley, or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Los Angeles.
For my project, I’ll be working with JPL’s Exoplanet Exploration team from June, adapting science communication resources to align with the school curriculum. These resources will centre around one of my favourite topics; exoplanets, which are basically planets outside the solar system, orbiting a star other than the sun. I first got interested in exoplanets through my education work at Space Place.
Exoplanets were first discovered in the 1990s. Before then, the only planetary system we could study was the solar system. Exoplanets help us figure out what the solar system was like in the past, or what might happen to it in future. But it is hard to spot exoplanets. There are stars we can see in the night sky that have exoplanets, but you wouldn’t be able to spot the planet orbiting it, as it is much smaller than the star, and doesn’t make any of its own light. So, to find exoplanets, we study the light coming from distant stars and look to see if the brightness ever decreases (even by 1%). If this keeps happening at regular intervals, it could be because a planet is passing in front of the star.
This is how the seven planets orbiting Trappist-1 were found, and we explore them in the planetarium.
“We’re going to visit Trappist-1 b up close. But first, let’s give it a fun name.”
“Ben!”, “Basketball!”,“Billy-bob!”“Great! Let’s visit planet basketball.
That’s the kind of conversations we have when running planetarium shows at Space Place and I really enjoy seeing how willingly students throw themselves into imagining what conditions on another planet would be like, such as on Trappist-1 b (aka basketball). Experiences like these spark curiosity in students, and I know that having fun with learning built a life-long interest in science for me.
I’ll be bringing the perspective that I’ve gained at Space Place to my work at NASA and I’m planning to use this opportunity to make a difference back here in New Zealand. When I come back, I’ll begin a PhD in Mathematics Education and I’m looking forward to contributing to any work done around making science-learning fun, engaging, and inclusive to empower future generations of scientists.
Whether it is exploring exoplanets in the planetarium, seeing Saturn up close through the telescope, or being an astronaut in our Tūhura module, Space Place inspires all of us to reach for the stars.
- Grace Jacobs Corban is one of six recipients of the 2024 New Zealand Space Scholarship. She is a Visitor Experience host at Space Place and a Maths and Space Science tutor at Victoria University.
