{"id":20787,"date":"2026-08-31T11:04:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T11:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=20787"},"modified":"2026-08-31T11:04:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T11:04:24","slug":"smithsonian-starstruck-manchester-a-virtual-journey-through-our-universe-that-really-puts-things-into-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/smithsonian-starstruck-manchester-a-virtual-journey-through-our-universe-that-really-puts-things-into-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Smithsonian Starstruck, Manchester \u2013 a virtual journey through our universe that really puts things into perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve always been fascinated by the night sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regular readers will probably already know this, because over the last few months I\u2019ve written quite a bit about astronomy and astrophotography. I\u2019ve experimented with the remarkable little Dwarf Mini telescope, photographed galaxies and nebulae from home and even carried it halfway around the world to Bolivia, where I was lucky enough to stand beneath one of the darkest skies I have ever seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this time, instead of trying to photograph the universe, we were going to step inside it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We went into Manchester to experience Smithsonian Starstruck<\/a> – An Immersive Experience<\/strong>, presented by Fever in collaboration with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And what an experience it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starstruck is a virtual reality experience, but describing it simply as VR doesn\u2019t really do it justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the headset goes on, the room around you disappears and suddenly you\u2019re somewhere completely different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experience begins at an observatory on Earth before taking you on a journey out into space. You can move around freely and, despite knowing perfectly well that you\u2019re actually standing in a room in Manchester, your brain very quickly starts accepting the world being presented in front of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You look around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You look above you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You look beneath you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And suddenly the scale of the universe begins to make a little more sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or perhaps it makes even less<\/em> sense, because the numbers involved are almost impossible for us to comprehend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the Big Bang to galaxies, stars and planets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the things I particularly enjoyed was the way Starstruck attempts to explain how everything fits together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We travelled back towards the beginnings of the universe and the Big Bang before seeing how matter eventually came together, forming stars, galaxies and the incredible structures that we now photograph through telescopes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were nebulae \u2013 enormous clouds of gas and dust where stars are born \u2013 and explanations of the life cycle of stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You witness a supernova and see how material from dying stars can eventually become part of new stars and planets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is quite a thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The atoms that make up the world around us \u2013 and indeed ourselves \u2013 ultimately have a connection with stars that existed long before our own Solar System.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standing inside a virtual representation of all this gives it a scale that a photograph on a screen simply can\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hubble, James Webb and Chandra<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The experience also introduces some of the incredible instruments humanity has built to look deeper into the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people will have heard of the Hubble Space Telescope<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Launched in 1990, Hubble completely transformed our view of space and produced some of the most recognisable astronomical photographs ever taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of those is the famous Pillars of Creation<\/strong>, part of the Eagle Nebula \u2013 huge columns of gas and dust where new stars are forming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there is the James Webb Space Telescope<\/strong>, launched in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Webb observes primarily in infrared light, allowing astronomers to peer through dust and look extraordinarily far back in time. Because light takes time to travel across the universe, looking at extremely distant galaxies really is looking into the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other observatory featured in Starstruck is the Chandra X-ray Observatory<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Chandra looks at the universe in X-rays rather than visible light, allowing scientists to study some of the most energetic phenomena out there, including exploding stars and black holes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s also an encounter with NASA\u2019s Parker Solar Probe<\/strong>, the spacecraft sent closer to the Sun than any spacecraft before it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing these machines represented at scale in virtual reality is fascinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We tend to see photographs of telescopes and spacecraft on a television or computer screen, but VR provides a completely different sense of their size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there\u2019s the Sun\u2026<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We all know the Sun is enormous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re taught it at school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can read the dimensions and compare them with Earth, but numbers on a page don\u2019t necessarily prepare you for seeing the difference represented visually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starstruck takes you close to the Sun and demonstrates the extraordinary violence taking place on the surface of the star that keeps every one of us alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solar flares suddenly look rather different when you\u2019re virtually standing beside them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet our Sun is simply one star amongst an almost unimaginable number of stars in our galaxy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then you start thinking about how many galaxies there are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the point where my brain begins to struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A black hole is something else entirely<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Another memorable part of the experience takes you towards a supermassive black hole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black holes are one of those things that almost sound as though somebody invented them for science fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An object with gravity so powerful that beyond a certain point even light cannot escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet they are real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting anywhere near one in reality obviously isn\u2019t something any of us are likely to add to the holiday itinerary, so virtual reality is probably the safer option!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, it\u2019s the sense of scale that makes Starstruck work so well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You aren\u2019t simply looking at an illustration of a black hole. You feel as though you are approaching one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From photographing nebulae to standing amongst them<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This was probably the part that connected Starstruck most strongly with my own interest in astrophotography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this year I started experimenting with the Dwarf Mini<\/strong>, a tiny smart telescope which still feels slightly impossible to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote about my first experiences with it here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dwarf Mini \u2013 it feels like this should be impossible!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can automatically locate and photograph objects in the night sky that are effectively invisible to our eyes from light-polluted areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Galaxies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nebulae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Star clusters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things that are sitting above our heads every night, whether we can see them or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I took the Dwarf Mini with me to Peru and Bolivia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually we reached Uyuni, where I found myself standing beneath an astonishingly dark sky at over 12,000 feet. The Milky Way was clearly visible with the naked eye and I had the opportunity to photograph deep-sky objects from conditions completely unlike those I normally experience back home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can read about that adventure here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dwarf Mini and its adventure in Peru and Bolivia \u2013 including one of the darkest places on Earth<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was something particularly satisfying, therefore, about seeing nebulae and galaxies presented during Starstruck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve photographed some of these sorts of objects as tiny patches of colour appearing gradually on my phone screen as the telescope stacks exposure after exposure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I was virtually standing amongst them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there was Jodrell Bank<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our visit also reminded me of our recent trip to Jodrell Bank in Cheshire<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There we stood underneath the enormous Lovell Telescope and learned about a completely different way of exploring the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike Hubble or James Webb, the Lovell Telescope doesn\u2019t produce the colourful photographs most of us associate with astronomy. It is a radio telescope, detecting radio waves arriving from space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote about our visit here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jodrell Bank, Cheshire \u2013 educational and fascinating site of a radio telescope<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between Jodrell Bank, experimenting with astrophotography and now Starstruck, I\u2019m beginning to realise just how many different ways there are of looking at the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visible light is only a tiny part of the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Radio telescopes can detect one part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandra looks at X-rays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Webb looks predominantly in infrared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And each reveals something that our own eyes simply cannot see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, is Starstruck worth visiting?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For us, yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It manages to explain some extremely complicated subjects without making you feel as though you\u2019re sitting through a science lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Children can enjoy flying through space and seeing stars explode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adults can do exactly the same thing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But underneath the entertainment there is some fascinating science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For somebody like me who already has an interest in astronomy and astrophotography, it added another dimension to things I\u2019ve previously read about and photographed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For somebody who knows very little about astronomy, I suspect it might just spark an interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most importantly, though, it leaves you with that same feeling I had looking upwards in Bolivia and standing underneath the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We spend our lives worrying about traffic, work, bills and what we\u2019re having for dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then somebody shows you a galaxy containing billions of stars, reminds you that there are countless other galaxies beyond it and points out that the light reaching us may have been travelling across space for millions or even billions of years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suddenly being stuck in traffic on the M60 doesn\u2019t seem quite such a big problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smithsonian Starstruck is in Manchester\u2019s Northern Quarter and, if you have even a passing interest in space, astronomy or simply experiencing something rather different, I\u2019d certainly recommend giving it a go.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It really does make you realise just how incredibly small we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And just how much there is still to discover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve always been fascinated by the night sky. Regular readers will probably already know this, because over the last few months I\u2019ve written quite a bit about astronomy and astrophotography. I\u2019ve experimented with the remarkable little Dwarf Mini telescope, photographed galaxies and nebulae from home and even carried it halfway around the world to Bolivia,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19683,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":1457,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1457],"tags":[1449,1500,1464,1459,1530],"class_list":["post-20787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-astronomy-and-astrophotography","tag-astronomy","tag-astrophotography","tag-dwarf-lab","tag-dwarf-mini","tag-starstuck"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7ZU0a-5ph","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_1139-2_res-961.jpg?fit=948%2C530&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20787"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20794,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20787\/revisions\/20794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiftyfourandcounting.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}