The Ward Observatory on Queens Park hill is a small astronomical observatory with a working Victorian-era telescope, built in 1903 and still used for public viewing nights. The domed building sits in the park between the Sarjeant Gallery and the Whanganui Regional Museum, and its public nights — usually on clear Friday evenings — offer a look through the original refractor telescope at the moon, planets, and star clusters.
The observatory is run by volunteers and is one of a handful of surviving public observatories from the Victorian era still operating in New Zealand. It is a pleasant, unhurried experience — part history of astronomy, part actual stargazing.