Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
cisely; it was added in 1833 to allow ships on the Thames to set their clocks. On the house's
balcony overlooking the Thames, you can take a look at a
Camera Obscura
, of the kind
which Flamsteed used to make safe observations of the sun.
Flamsteed's chief task was to study the night sky in order to discover an astronomical
method of finding the
longitude
of a ship at sea, the lack of which was causing enormous
problems for the emerging British Empire. Greenwich's greatest claim to fame, nowadays,
is as the home of
Greenwich Mean Time
(GMT) and the Prime Meridian. Since 1884,
Greenwich has occupied zero longitude - hence the world sets its clocks by GMT.
Astronomers continued to work here until the postwar smog forced them to decamp; the
old observatory, meanwhile, is now a very popular
museum
. First off, you can see Flam-
steed's restored apartments and the Octagon Room, where the king used to show off to his
guests. The Time galleries beyond display four of the fabulous marine clocks designed by
John Harrison
, including “H4”, which helped him win the Longitude Prize in 1763. In the
Meridian Building, you get to see several meridians, including the present-day Greenwich
Meridian fixed by the cross hairs in Airy's “Transit Circle”, the astronomical instrument that
dominates the last room.
In the
Astronomy Centre
, housed in the fanciful, domed terracotta South Building, the
high-tech galleries give a brief rundown of the Big Bang theory of the universe, allow you
to conduct some hands-on experiments to explain concepts such as gravity and spectro-
scopy, and then invite you to consider the big questions of astronomy today. You can also
choose to watch one of the thirty-minute presentations in the state-of-the-art
Planetarium
(daily noon-4pm; £6.50), introduced by a Royal Observatory astronomer.
