Melbourne Observatory

This guide to Melbourne Observatory follows the great mirror telescope installed here in 1869, once judged a masterpiece by London's Royal Society and briefly the second largest telescope on Earth. You'll hear about astronomers comparing nightly sketches of southern nebulae to decades-old drawings by John Herschel, puzzling over shapes that seemed to have changed, even as the instrument's own materials began to fail it. Stand where the dome once stood and picture the eyepiece these observers hunched over.