For more than a century the observatory has sat atop the mountain, overlooking the territory, surviving military secondment during the Second World War and near destruction in the 2003 bushfires to become the inspiring and exciting institution it is today.

"The observatory was the brainchild of a guy called Walter Geoffrey Duffield, who'd been lobbying for a solar observatory in Australia since about 1905," ANU heritage officer Amy Jarvis explains.

"By 1910 the government incorporated it into the plan for Canberra, and in 1911 they constructed the Oddie Dome, which was the first Commonwealth building in Canberra."

A pine plantation was established at the base of the mountain to ensure that rising heat wouldn't affect observing conditions, but plans to construct the remainder of the observatory were put on hold when Australia went to war in 1914.

"After almost 20 years of planning, in 1924, the Commonwealth Solar Observatory was officially established by Duffield, who was instated as the founding director," Jarvis says.

"The Director's Residence was built up there and Duffield moved in with his wife and children. Sadly, he died not long after, in August 1929, and he's buried on the mountain."

When the Second World War rolled around, Stromlo was turned into a covert optical munitions factory, where the astronomers and physicists onsite turned their attention to crafting gun sights and rangefinders for weapons.

"They were working pretty hard up there – they made about 25,000 items during the course of the war," Jarvis says.

"A lot of the people working on the munitions factory side of things were actually Jewish refugees who had been brought across to Australia. That's an interesting and secret part of Stromlo's history that not many people know about."

Following the war there was a boom period at Stromlo that saw the construction of a range of buildings and a new 74-inch dome. The ANU School of Astronomy and Astrophysics took the observatory over from the Commonwealth government, and the focus of the facility turned from solar observing to the optical observing it's known for today.

Then, in 2003, disaster struck Stromlo. Bushfires devastated large parts of the Canberra region in January, and the observatory was among the hardest hit.

"The massive temperatures at the site were in the 100s of degrees, and the pine forest at the bottom really acted like a box of matches that ensured the observatory went up in flames," Jarvis says.

"The observatory lost all of its major telescopes. It lost almost 20 residences, the administration building, its library and all of its workshops."

It would have been easy to abandon the site after such widespread destruction, but ANU staff returned to Stromlo within weeks to get back to work. Soon, they began the process of rebuilding the observatory to be bigger and better than ever.

"That really goes to show the strong determination in the people from the research school, and people's commitment and love of the site itself. It's a very special place," Jarvis says.

Today, Mount Stromlo is home to a community of more than 100 astronomers and scientific researchers, as well as a range of newly renovated visitor facilities, and is gearing up to host a once-in-a-lifetime event that all of Canberra can be involved in – an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the number of people stargazing at a single site.

"We really hope all of Canberra and people from across the region come to help us break the record," Mt Stromlo's Dr Brad Tucker says.

"It's going to be a really fun challenge. It's a great way to connect people and accentuate what we're doing with science, and everyone that comes along gets a cool souvenir telescope out of it!"

Tucker, an astronomer and astrophysicist who works on the site, and his team aim to get between 10,000 and 20,000 stargazers up on the mountain, all examining the stars through small telescopes, which will be handed out on the night. There will be live music, dance performances, and Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Brian Schmidt, who conducted much of his research on the Stromlo site, will be one of a number of members of the international scientific community giving talks.

If Stromlo can take out the stargazing record, it will be added to its already impressive list of achievements. There's Schmidt and his team's discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, which won them a Nobel Prize in 2011, and Stromlo played a part in the ground-breaking 1990s research that helped to determine the age of the universe for the very first time.

"What really inspired this world record attempt are these monthly public observing nights we've been running," Tucker explains.

"We've been running them throughout winter for four years now, and they just keep getting more and more popular.

"If someone has their own telescope they are welcome to bring it up and observe from our site, then we follow that with talks indoors by a range of astronomers."

2015 public stargazing nights will be held on June 19, July 17 and September 25.

There's a lot to discover at the Stromlo site during the day as well. The Director's Residence has recently been rebuilt to act as a museum that demonstrates the history of the observatory.

From the outside it looks like it would have in 1928 when it was constructed, but inside it looks like it did the day after the fires, with audio-visual installations that the public can discover and learn from.

Since its launch in early 2015 it has been open daily from 9am to 5pm, and, alongside the accompanying heritage trail that winds across the site, it tells the story of Stromlo, from its importance to the Indigenous Ngunnawal people to the stories of the men, women and children who lived and worked there throughout the 20th century.

Tucker explains that the new interactive museum, upcoming world record attempt and public stargazing nights are just a small taste of what Mt Stromlo is now offering to the public.

"This year we're running an open day on October 11, where there'll be demonstrations, talks, Questacon will be doing some fun things – It'll just be a fun, cool day," he says.

"We also run bi-monthly daytime site tours. One of the things that people always want to see, they want to stargaze of course, but they want to see what we're actually doing, they want to see the research, they want to see the labs, they want to see the inside stuff .

"We keep everything free, because we want everyone to have a chance to do everything we can offer, and we want people just to enjoy the site."

"It's really nice to see people coming back to Stromlo, and that's what these events can do," Jarvis adds.