Cosmos Centre - Day and Night, Weather Station Tour and Graham Andrews Parklands (Natural Sciences Loop)

Monday 4 April 2016 – 167 243 – 36 °C

"Thing" that releases the weather balloon

Weather balloon on its way up with the sensor hanging below

We began the day with a trip to the Bureau of Meteorology.  We watched the meteorologist record the daily observations – evaporation, minimum and maximum temperatures, rainfall, soil temperatures at 10cm, 20cm and 50cm.  We also got to watch the weather balloon go up.  It rises at 300m/s to height of 32km or more and has a GPS tracker that allows information to be sent back from up to 12km.  This information is used for weather forecasting.

Observing the sun

Photo taken down the eyepiece of the telescope

Meteorites

Next for the day was the Cosmos Centre – to view the Sun! Using a specialised telescope, we could look at the Sun – we could see two areas of solar flares and a sunspot.  We found out all sorts of cool facts about the Sun and Solar System! We then had a tour of the Meteorites at the Cosmos Centre, where they explained the different types of meteorites. “Jack” is about 15cm long and less then 10cm in diameter, and yet is 1.7kg – extremely dense.

https://www.cosmoscentre.com/

Stop 3 for the day was the Graham Andrews Parklands.  We had a picnic lunch and then followed the “Outback Native Timber Walk”.  This displayed various species of native tree with information panels explaining the indigenous and non-indigenous uses for the plants.

https://www.murweh.qld.gov.au/graham-andrews-parklands

Stop 4 was the Royal Flying Doctor Service Visitor Centre.  This had some great displays, including sample calls we could listen to and a current version of the RFDS chest that is at stations for use in conjunction with advice from RFDS staff.

https://www.queensland.com › Consumer › Attraction

After dinner, we headed back to the Cosmos Centre for Aboriginal Night Sky Stories.  This was presented by Shelley, a local aboriginal lady.  She was quite nervous at speaking initially but warmed up and did very well. Shelley explained that aboriginal people look at the black spaces between the stars when interpreting the sky, rather than using the stars in a dot-to-dot fashion.  She also explained how to see the emu in the sky, warrior in the sky and the crocodile in the northern sky.  Shelley also told us the Barramundi dreamtime story about two young lovers who ran away from the girls arranged marriage.  Really enjoyed this session!!

https://www.cosmoscentre.com/