Museum of the Moon

We went to see the Museum of the Moon exhibition, when it was touring in our area.

The exhibition was created by artist Luke Jerram and is a 7 metre diameter model of the moon. It is made of 120dpi NASA images of the moon’s surface. It is internally lit and is at an approximate scale of 1:500,000, which means that every centimetre of the model represents approximately 5 kilometres of the lunar surface.

At each place that it travels to, it is displayed in a different way and can be indoors or outdoors. When it was on display in our local area, it was indoors and the area it was in was bathed in a blue light, so it looked as though you were standing close to the moon in the night sky. At various places on the floor beneath the moon there were blankets and pillows, so people could lie on the floor and look up at the moon. There was also seating available for people to sit down and enjoy the exhibition.

It was free to visit and accessible for wheelchair users.  When Sue saw the model of the moon for the first time, she was awestruck by it and the amount of detail in the model. She described it as almost like standing next to the moon, without ever leaving the Earth. John was also able to get a sense of how spectacular the model was from Sue’s description. George enjoyed seeing it too 🙂

The short video below shows the exhibition as it was when it visited our local area. You can visit the Museum of the Moon website here, to find out when it will be in your local area, if you wish to see it for yourself.