I had wanted to visit the Gaia installation when it was at Durham Cathedral but narrowly missed out before it ended its recent run last month.

Artist Luke Jerram’s exhibit, which featured an illuminated planet Earth suspended in the building, was later described as an “awe-inspiring artwork”.

Having said that I was pleased last week when I heard a similar work was to feature in Hexham Abbey although this time the featured globe was of the Moon.

Entry to Museum of the Moon, which is is set to run in the nave of the abbey until November, costs £3 for adults and £1 for children and you can book a visit via the abbey’s website.

Apparently, during an earlier visit to the north east, it drew a total of 95,000 visitors to Durham Cathedral in 2021 and it has returned for a second visit to the region where it will be suspended for the next six weeks.

The globe is an internally-lit moon which measures six metres in diameter and the 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the lunar surface are at an approximate scale of 1:600,000 – basically each centimetre of the spherical sculpture represents 6km of the moon’s surface.

The exhibit coincides with the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s 1973 Dark Side of the Moon – visitors to the exhibit can actually gaze in wonder at a better illuminated version of the rarely seen darkened half of the lunar landscape.

I have to admit it was quite an impressive sight seeing the Moon up close and personal and what added to the installation was the recordings of the radio communication between the Apollo missions and Houston. Well worth a visit.