With a variety of habitats for plants and animals, the Astropark is an ecologically rich site. The Meadow Walk extends from the Stone Calendar at the top of Hill of Infinity towards the cathedrals. The Woodland Walk runs down the hill from it to the Planetarium. A concrete slab nearby marks the location of the Gravity Station used to measure the acceleration due to gravity by the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland to determine the true topography of the island.
The Phenology Garden, recording dates in the seasonal cycles of plants, lies across the Robinson Drive, past our new managed Wildflower Meadow near to the Meteorological Station.
Meadow Walk
The grassy Meadow Walk meanders around a natural wildflower meadow, where a mix of grasses, thistles, rosebay willowherb and some low bushes and trees provide plenty of food for pollinators, some shelter for small birds and animals, and of course all natural carbon capture.
Wildflower Meadow
The Wildflower Meadow next to the Robinson Drive and the Phenology Garden is managed and contains a mix of flowers that blossom in late summer, specifically chosen to attract many pollinators – and a colourful feast for the eyes is a pleasant bonus!
Birds
The grounds play host to a remarkable variety of species. From the largest bird the buzzard, often seen circling high up in the sky, to much smaller species like the wren and the smallest of them all, the gold crest.
Take a moment and, as well as the more common species such as wood pigeons, blue tits, robins and blackbirds, you can see the amber list species such as the bullfinch and song thrush and red list species like the starling and the fieldfare.
Other finches to be seen include the goldfinch, the chaffinch and the greenfinch. If you are lucky you may even catch a glimpse of more elusive species such as the sparrow hawk and the tree creeper.
The raven is an occasional visitor and just one of the Corvidae family resident on the grounds. You can’t miss the rooks, magpies, jackdaws and sometimes the more colourful jay.
These are just some of the birds you can see but for the keen ornithologist there are more to be spotted.
You might also find a few more… wooden-looking birds, some perched in the trees, others on the ground, which are part of our augmented reality nature trail around the Astropark!
Gravity Station
On 29 August 2019 the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland conducted measurements of the acceleration due to gravity, g, from Armagh using a Gravity Station located beside the stone circle on top of the Hill of Infinity. A concrete slab marks the spot where the Gravity Station was located.
The value found for g was 9.814 554 151 5 m s-2 with an error of around 10 nm s-2 (i.e. of +/- 1 in the penultimate digit). This is easily the most accurate measurement ever made of the acceleration due to gravity in Armagh!
The measurements form part of a new height survey by OSNI and OSI across the island of Ireland to determine its true topography.
Armagh Observatory provided one of the fundamental datum points for the first survey of Ireland conducted by the Ordnance Survey, undertaken between 1829 and 1834 and published in 1835. Armagh Observatory owns a complete copy of the maps from this first survey of Ireland. They can be seen today in the Armagh Robinson Library.
