Giant model Moon in major new exhibition at Lynn Museum

A giant model of our nearest celestial neighbour has landed at Lynn Museum.

She forms part of an exhibition which traces lore and legend, the history of lunar exploration and even includes a fragment from her surface 238,855 miles away.

Lynn Museum curator Oliver Bone, with the Moon (Image: Chris Bishop)

"We're very excited," said curator Oliver Bone after the finishing touches were made to the displays.

"What's wonderful about it is to be able to use the high ceiling void of the chapel and build an exhibition around it."

A battery of rockets chart the different missions to the Moon during the Space Race of the 1960s and '70s, when landings were broadcast live on TV.

Curator Dayna Woolbright with some of the model rockets on display (Image: Chris Bishop)

A section also details the various conspiracy theories which claimed the landings were faked by NASA and the astronauts never landed.

Displays also look at the mythology surrounding the moon and its impact on plants and animals, such as coral and crabs.

There are also maps and models of sections of its pock-marked surface, with its craters caused by meteorite strikes and volcanic eruptions.

A fragment of rock from the Moon forms part of the exhibition (Image: Chris Bishop)

But the Moon herself is what blows you away, hanging high in the ceiling of the former Union Baptist Chapel next to the bus station, eerily lit by light through the museum's towering windows.

She rubs shoulders with a display of timbers and the central stump from Seahenge, the Bronze Age timber circle which was unearthed on the beach at Holme, near  Hunstanton, in 1998, in one of the 20th century's most incredible archaeological discoveries.

The exhibition runs until September 15 (Image: Chris Bishop)

The exhibition, funded by a £10,000 grant from the government’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund via West Norfolk council runs until September 15. Admission is free until March.