Museums Victoria is responsible for the state’s scientific and cultural collections, providing public access through three museums.
We also oversee a wide range of research programs, the continued development of the state’s collections, and run major education and research based websites.
We are the largest public museums organisation in Australia.
“I arrived in Perth and bought a foam mattress for the back of my car – my bed for half of the trip. I stocked up on tinned food, and I headed north in search of these tiny eight-legged gems.”
The Victorian grassland earless dragon may well be the first lizard species driven to extinction on Australia’s mainland. But conservationists aren’t ready to declare it dead just yet.
The 2018 Geminids meteor shower recorded over two very cold hours on the slope of Mount Lütispitz, Switzerland.
Flickr/Lukas Schlagenhauf
Moonlight will spoil some of the big meteor showers this year, but still plenty of others to see. So here’s your guide on when and where to look to catch nature’s fireworks.
Cover of the menu for the AIF Christmas Dinner, Hotel Cecil, London, in 1916. Illustration by Fred Leist.
Museums Victoria collection, donated by Jean Bourke
It’s quite hard to tell when a sea creature is extinct – there’s always hope it will turn up somewhere.
An artist’s impression of the path of star S2 as it passes very close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The very strong gravitational field causes the colour of the star to shift slightly to the red. (Size and colour exaggerated for clarity.)
ESO/M. Kornmesser
Astronomers traced a single star as it passed close to the black hole at the centre of our galaxy, and detected the telltale signature of Einstein’s gravity in action.
Bulan “berdarah” pada 31 Januari 2018. Kesempatan kedua kita untuk melihat gerhana bulan tahun ini akan terjadi pada 28 Juli.
Martin George
Now’s a great time to see Jupiter as it’s about to be the closest to Earth for some time. Time too to catch up with the latest on the Juno mission, exploring the largest planet in our Solar System.
Changing colours of the Moon during a total lunar eclipse, Mt Buffalo National Park, June 16, 2011.
Phil Hart
There is plenty of excitement about the lunar eclipse this week, but don’t believe all you read and hear about this wonderful astronomical event.
The 2017 Geminids as seen from Ecuador, against the backdrop of the splendid Milky Way (centre) and the Large Magellanic Cloud (right).
Flickr/David Meyer
A solar day is a measure of how long it takes the Earth to rotate from one noon to the next, and today’s summer solstice also happens to be the longest solar day of the year.
The pygmy right whale, Caperea marginata, at sea.
Robert Pitman
Fossils of a whale thought to be found only in southern waters have been discovered at two sites in the northern hemisphere.
Cassini makes the first radio occultation of Saturn’s rings producing this simulated image with green for particles smaller than 5cm and purple where particles are larger.
NASA/JPL
The Cassini space probe took us up close and through the beautiful rings of Saturn. It captured some amazing images, and even the sound of the rings during its mission.
A Cassini portrait of five of Saturn’s moons. Janus (179km across) is on the far left, Pandora (81km across) orbits between the A ring and the thin F ring, Enceladus (504km across) is centre, Rhea (1,528km), is bisected by the right edge of the image and the smaller moon Mimas (396km) is seen beyond Rhea also on the right side of the image.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
With only days to go before NASA’s Cassini space probe ends its two-decade mission to explore Saturn, what has it revealed about the ringed planet, the second largest in our solar system?