New Guinness world record for number of stargazers set in Australia

A new Guinness world record has been set for the most people stargazing at one site at the Australian National University (ANU) on Friday night.

More than 1,800 people arrived at the AUN campus at around 7 p. m. local time (0900GMT) for the attempt to break the Guinness world record.

At 7:10 p.m., all participants were asked to view the moon with their binoculars or telescopes at the same time for 10 minutes.

The previous record stood at 640 people at a single site. Representatives from Guinness World Records later declared the new record at ANU of 1,869.

The record was set at the ANU campus as part of the university' s contribution to National Science Week.

"We had a fantastic turnout to smash the old record," said organizer Dr. Brad Tucker from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

"The clouds over Canberra gave us a few headaches, but they parted long enough for us to see the stars and moon and set a new record."

The crowd at ANU was also part of an attempt an hour later to break the second Guinness world record of "most people stargazing across multiple sites in one country." Some 48 places across Australia including the Torres Strait, Broken Hill and in Western Australia's Pilbara region participated in the attempt to break the current record of 3,007 people.

Tucker is hoping for up to 15,000 people across Australia to take part. The exact number of people participating will be announced by Guinness World Records later this week. Endi