Science & Engineering

The museums, the machines and the men and women who worked it out: laboratories kept as they were, beam engines under steam, the tunnel, the barrier, the roofs, and the plaques on the houses where the ideas came.

Tell us what we can do better, or what you’re trying to discover.

Hampstead Observatory

A volunteer-run observatory by Whitestone Pond, open free on clear winter nights for anyone to look through the telescope.

Learned societiesOpen days onlyGo insideFree

The Hampstead Scientific Society has kept an observatory on the highest ground in London since 1910, and its six-inch Cooke refractor is pointed at the Moon, the planets and whatever else is up on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings from mid-September to April - when the sky is clear, which the volunteers decide on the day and announce online. It is free, the queue on a good night is part of it, and Saturn's rings through a Victorian telescope on a hill above the city is the sort of thing London does not advertise.

Where
Lower Terrace, Hampstead, NW3 6RG
Nearest station
Hampstead · 6 min walk

Mid-September to April: Fridays and Saturdays 20:00–22:00, Sundays 11:00–13:00, clear skies only

Free, with tickets released on Eventbrite when the forecast allows.

NearbyScience & Engineering

NearbyOther Categories

See more nearby listings

Submit a correction for this listing.

Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

Which area are you in?