A Day Out at Peter Harrison Planetarium

Kai has been given some interesting homework as of late, including a bunch of awesome projects to choose from, all around the subject he is learning about. One of the projects involved going to the in London. As we love taking the kids on adventures, we decided to head there and see one of the shows on offer – Kai choose ‘Meet the Neighbours’ which explored the galaxy and focused on some of the other planets and stars around Earth.

Once you’ve walked up the massive hill to the Peter Harrison Planetarium, most of what’s within the planetarium is free to interact with and learn from, with the planetarium shows being the only thing to purchase – and we’d recommend purchasing them in advanced if you go on a weekend, as the shows were all sold out when we got there! We showed up a bit early and ate a packed lunch before heading into the planetarium itself.

The Peter Harrison Planetarium is split into loads of different rooms, across three floors. Some rooms have videos playing where children had asked questions and scientists had answered them, with various interactive displays around them – others have documentary-styled videos playing, showcasing the world and how it turns. One room is dedicated to the moons around each of the planets. The first room we entered had a bunch of interactive displays, which was a great start. All of us teamed up to attempt to launch a rocket into space – each in charge of a different aspect of the space ship. A commander told us what was needed for the mission, and we needed to read about each of the parts on our screen and figure out how to best load up the ship. After some tactful picking, we ended up having a ship that was slightly too heavy, with some incorrect parts picked – but we did learn a lot about machinery that ends up on a spaceship!

In that room, we also took turns moving a moon around a sun, showing dips in the way it moved on a radar. This was a pretty interesting and fun little display, which everyone could understand – even Robin who’s the smallest of the lot enjoyed it. The children very much wanted to watch the documentary-styled video in another room, which briefly talked about how everything around us is made of star dust, what star matter is, and about how we see stars. This was interesting, but it was on loop. By then, it was time to go to see our show.

Meet the Neighbours show

Kai had chose the Meet the Neighbour show himself and was pretty excited for it. We all filed into the very big dome area at the Peter Harrison Planetarium where we were introduced to our narrator. Above us, projected on the doom, we watched the images go from the very building we were in, into space! Meet the Neighbours focused on the stars in our sky, then on Jupiter, Mars, and the asteroid belt. Watching planets and space in a dome, like at the Peter Harrison Planetarium, is a truly wonderful experience. The dome makes you feel like you are so close! The show was wonderful and a great length for kids, there were various questions asked with children shouting out answers, lots of great explanations, and we were pretty happy with the feature planet being Jupiter.

After the show was over, the narrator told us about a family activity taking place on the top floor, so we went there next. There seems to often be free activities on the top floor, which come in a variety so that there is something for every age. Amelia and Robin opted to colour in some images of their Space Adventure cartoon character Ted, while Kai choose to make a star map that can be moved to show the night sky each day for a year. This star map was easy to make and quite fun!

We then dipped back down to the moon exhibition, looking at images from all of the different moons that each planet has, as well as the size of the moon in comparison to the planet it orbited. All of the exhibitions were really nice – and it was pretty funny to hear the kids pointing to anything with the world Jupiter on it and announcing that it was Jupiter, to the person named Jupiter.

We are so happy that the school suggested the Peter Harrison Planetarium as one of the projects, as this planetarium was a very fun adventure. The view from outside the planetarium is also lovely, as you can see all of London from there. If you are looking for more things to do in Greenwich, there is always plenty to take a look at and explore!

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!