The winter sky with its crisp and clear nights provides you with a brilliant view of the night sky.

You will be able to see the beautiful Jewel Box cluster of stars that were discovered by the English astronomer Herschel who was carrying out observations of the night sky in South Africa in the nineteenth century.

Also visible through the telescopes will be a number of globular or ball shaped clusters, such as 47 Tucanae and Omega Centauri.

47 Tucanae is the most splendid globular cluster in the southern hemisphere sky and is roughly the size of the full Moon under good seeing conditions. It is about 16 000 light years away and is over 10 billion years old. Then there is Saturn – the Lord of the Rings to dazzle you with its magnificent splendour and take your breath away.

Of course you will also see my favourite celestial object – the Moon with its myriad of small and large craters.

Craters that were first discovered by Galileo in the 16th century with a small telescope, in fact, a telescope smaller than the ones you will look through on the astronomy night. It was this discovery and the discovery of the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus that allowed him to single handedly demolish the whole edifice of Aristotelian physics and usher in the scientific revolution and change the course of western civilization.

We are the inheritors of this scientific revolution and its benefits. By this act of discovery and his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems he antagonized the church. He was forced to recant his teachings about the heliocentric system of the world and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. His book was banned by the church. The ban on his book was only lifted in the 1990s. Was the church right in banning a scientific book?

Event: Astronomy Night for the Public

Where: UWS Campbelltown Rotary Observatory, UWS Campbelltown Campus

Date: Saturday 30th May 2009

Time: 6 pm to 9 pm

Bookings essential: Phone Marlene Woolley 02 4620 3786 Mondays to Fridays from 9 am to 5 pm.

Organisers: University of Western Sydney in collaboration with the Macarthur Astronomical Society