Cosmic Christmas

Take a break from the pre-Christmas shopping mayhem at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

To take advantage of the season’s early sunsets, they’re running drop-in observing sessions at 4.30 and 5pm every Saturday and Sunday starting on 5 December, and then every day in the final week leading up to Christmas Eve. Spend half an hour with the observatory’s historic 28in telescope and see Jupiter and its moons.

There's also the new planetarium show, Christmas Stars, which slips the latest thoughts about the Star of Bethlehem into a virtual introduction to the December skies. It runs on the same days as the observing sessions, but at noon, 2.45 and 5pm.

And if that’s still not enough, on 10 December Professor Colin Pillinger, the man behind the Beagle 2 mission, will give the Royal Observatory Christmas Lecture: The Planets, an Inspiration at Christmas.

Phone: 020 8312 6608
Web: bit.ly/dropin