When George McIntyre (6) came home from school on Friday (July 21), he was filled with stories of the things he learned at the Central Stories Museum and Art Gallery earlier that day.

George was one of 470 schoolchildren who experienced the Tūhura Otago Museum’s Digital Starlab and interactive science experiments as a preview to the Winterstellar Community Day on Saturday.

“He wouldn’t stop talking about it,” said George’s mother, Lauren McIntyre, “and then Harry got jealous.”

Harry is George’s four-year-old brother, who got to experience the wonders of the skies himself on Saturday when Lauren and Bryan McIntyre brought the whole family back, including their daughter, Hazel (2).

“Hazel loves the stars,” Lauren said, while making star wheels so the family could stargaze from their Alexandra home.

Clyde School pupil George McIntyre experiments with a plasma ball during the interactive activities. 

The Winterstellar Community Day was an interactive and educational astronomical and astrophotography event run by Central Stories, CO Reap, the Otago Museum and the Winterstellar Charitable Trust.

Members of the trust gave talks on astrophotography, activities such as making the star maps were available for children and adults alike, and videos showed images taken of the night skies in Central Otago.

The wow factor for most participants (particularly the children) was the Digital Starlab - an inflatable planetarium visitors enter to see the sky displayed and constellations explained.

Marijn Kouwenhoven of the Otago Museum science outreach team said the presentations in the Starlab changed according to the age of their audience.

“With the wee ones, we just try to inspire awe and talk about the fact we can use the stars to tell stories and share knowledge with each other,” she said.

“We can show the lines that people drew between the stars when they saw them thousands of years ago. When you go out stargazing in real life, you can’t make that artwork appear.”

Within the Starlab, the sky first appears during the daytime, before Marijn “fast forwards” time to sunset and the stars begin to appear.

“Anytime in the Starlab when we move to sunset and the first stars appear, there is always that ‘Wow’ moment, she said.

Winterstellar Charitable Trust chief executive officer Andy Davey agreed.

“Just standing outside the stardome, when it switched from day to night, you could hear all the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’,” he said.

Emily Eastgate, of Tūhura Otago Museum’s science outreach team, sets up a telescope to allow people to safely view the sun.

Andy said the visitors really enjoyed the displays and talks, and the feedback was brilliant.

For him, the best result was when schoolchildren, like George McIntyre, inspired their entire family to come to the community day.