The giant orb, covered in detailed NASA imagery of the lunar surface, was created by Bristol-based Luke Jerram.
Titled Museum of the Moon, it has been hung temporarily in the Wills Memorial Building to welcome the university's new chancellor Sir Paul Nurse.
Mr Jerram, said: "This is an opportunity for the public to have a close encounter with the moon."
Images taken by a NASA satellite were used by the artist to create the installation.
Each centimetre of the internally-lit spherical structure represents 5km (3 miles) of the moon's surface.
Mr Jerram, who was behind Bristol's 2014 water slide and the globally successful street pianos, said it would give people the chance to "study every detail of its surface" as well as "bathe in moonlight".
"The Great Hall is such an amazing space to present the Museum of the Moon," he said.
The floating artwork, which is illuminated and accompanied by music from different composers, was created in partnership with the University of Bristol and the UK Space Agency.
The Great Hall will be open to the public to view the Museum of the Moon next weekend.

Aguirre was best known for his role in the long-running children's TV series El Chavo del Ocho, where he played the teacher, Professor Jirafales.
Episodes of the programme were repeated for years across Latin America, dubbed into Portuguese in Brazil.
He had been very ill for some time and died in his home in Puerto Vallarta.
In his role as Professor Jirafales, a play on the word "giraffe" because Ruben Aguirre was very tall and skinny, he enchanted his audience with his gentle slapstick humour, his catchphrases and his character's courtship of a local woman who had a cheeky son in his class.
He had started early in show business, first in radio, then television, and played various comedy roles.
In the nineties when his television contracts had finished he bought a circus and travelled with it across the Americas.
At one time he had earned a living as a bull-fighting commentator and he presented the first bullfight broadcast live via satellite from Madrid to Mexico.

Victoria mated with a male bear at the Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig, near Aviemore, earlier this year.
To protect her from being disturbed if she is pregnant, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) said she had been taken "off show".
If she does raise a cub or cubs, they would be born in December or January.
RZSS said it was not possible to say at this stage if Victoria was pregnant.
Polar bear cubs were last born in the UK almost 25 years ago.
Victoria was brought to Scotland from Aalborg Zoo in Denmark last year and is kept in an enclosure about a mile away from the park's two males, Arktos and Walker. She previously raised cubs in 2008.
Arktos was moved to Victoria's enclosure for a short time earlier this year.

"Dependency on giving that only appears to be charitable must end," he said in a tweet ahead of this weekend's African Union summit in South Africa.
The BBC's Robert Kiptoo in Kenya says it is not a government policy but a rallying cry for African leaders.
Aid is believed to account for 5-6% of Kenya's total income.
Mr Kenyatta said that foreign aid "often carries terms and conditions that preclude progress".
"It is time to give it up," he wrote.
A 7m (23ft) diameter giant replica of the moon has been installed in the University of Bristol's Great Hall.
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Mexican comic actor Ruben Aguirre, loved by millions of children and adults across Latin America, has died, aged 82.
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A female polar bear at a Scottish zoo has been temporarily put off limits to visitors as a precaution in case she is pregnant.
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Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta has urged fellow African leaders to stop receiving foreign aid, saying it is not an acceptable basis for prosperity.