In November 2009, the Yorkshire Museum - one of the oldest purpose-built museums in the country, sited on the grounds of St Marys Abbey - closed for a £2 million refurbishment. Nine months later, it reopens for Yorkshire Day on Sunday (August 1 2010) Read more
Visitors to the Yorkshire Museum can take a close-up look through the Museum's 160-year-old telescope, standing in an observatory in the gardens. The observatory was built in 1832 and 1833 and its 4in refractor telescope was built by York man Thomas Cooke in 1850 before he went on to make the then-largest telescope in the world. York played a crucial role in the development of astronomy in the 1780s when York-based astronomers John Goodricke and Edward Piggot laid the foundations of the study of stars of varying brightness. Read more