Stargazers set world record in Canberra

A group of stargazers in Canberra have set a world record for the most amount of people looking up at the night sky at the same time.

More than 1800 people gathered at the Australian National University this week to stargaze at the same time with telescopes and binoculars.

"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," Brad Tucker from the ANU's School of Astronomy and Astrophysics said on Friday.

Before the ANU's Guinness World Record of 1869 stargazers, the record stood at 640 people.