The Notes of Black Bile - Saturn and the Musical Description of Melancholy

The basic hypothesis of this paper is that the human mind tends to translate ideas about reality in certain unavoidable ways rather than others, building connections between our perceptions of visual and acoustic elements we experience. This tendency might reveal an underlying structure – a unique one, perhaps? – that governs how we interpret and categorise events in the world around us. Such a structure could have significant implications not only in the artistic field but also in the scientific one. In this sense, if such a structure exists, it would be crucial to investigate it in the search for connections between art and science.

In the case of melancholy, it has always been capable of stimulating astronomical and astrological references. In this work, I discuss the hypothesis of a close correlation between the idea of Saturn as the "planet of melancholy" and certain ways of composing music dedicated to it, or music used as a sound commentary on film sequences portraying Saturn. This idea stems from the observation that, although Saturn and melancholy have been extensively studied and described in literature and visual arts—and there are clear references to them in musical works—the analysis of how melancholy is translated into sound seems to have received little in-depth attention.

I began this study with two case studies that show a clear connection, mediated by melancholy, between the idea of Saturn, its visual representation, and orchestral works dedicated to it. The aim is to identify, if they exist as in the case of its pictorial representation, one or more distinctive and “necessary” perceptual traits—namely, compositional choices—in its melodic and symphonic depiction by Kepler, Händel, and other composers.

The Celestial Chronotope: Time And Relative Depiction In Space

The celestial geography of indigenous Arabian astronomy was heavily textured and characterised by a rich multivalency of meaning that was derived from visual observation at certain times of night and seasons of the year. Arabian asterisms were cultural texts that could be read by anyone in the community who knew their meanings, which were transmitted through poetry and rhymed prose. This is a characteristic of the celestial chronotope, a concept that describes the transmissible cultural meanings attached to the appearance of stars as they moved through time and space. This talk introduces the celestial chronotope as a tool to identify the transmissible cultural meanings that were attached to the appearance of stars as they moved through time and space, guiding travelers, tracking the progress of the night and forecasting seasonal changes.

Using examples from Arabic literature, this research presents stars as cultural texts that contain shared cultural meaning, and the celestial chronotope frames these numerous stars-as-cultural-texts within broad categories of meaning that scholars may adapt to other regional literatures as well. Following a review of Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary concept of the chronotope, its application to the opening section (nasīb) of the Arabic formulaic long poem (qaṣīda) and its further application to storied features of landscapes, the author's research applies the chronotope to the celestial geography of Arabian night skies as the celestial chronotope. Examples from Arabic poetry and rhymed prose distinguish three primary categories of the celestial chronotope: the Guide Star, the Celestial Clock and the Seasonal Forecaster. Understanding the celestial chronotope can help interpret lines of poetry and identify their temporal or seasonal setting, thus making indigenous Arabian astronomy an interpreter of Arabic poetry.

Cosmic Order and Power in Court Ballets of 17th Century France

This paper explores how 17th-century French court ballets drew inspiration from the Copernican re-ordering of the universe to craft performances that reflected shifting perceptions of cosmic, social and scientific hierarchies. The advent of the heliocentric theory, which placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe, challenged traditional worldviews and inspired new ways of thinking about the natural order, royal power, and the distinction between science and superstition.

Pulling together reviews published in newspapers, in-quarto commemorative booklets and programs, as well as costume descriptions and sketches, this paper analyzes the interplay between scientific innovation and artistic expression through a sample of eight French court ballets staged between 1628 and 1670, including the famous Ballet royal de la nuit which introduced King Louis XIV in his iconic role of the Sun. Staged for the entertainment of the rich and powerful, ballet, an important art form of the time, reflected the passions and concerns of aristocratic society and became an essential propaganda tool.

This presentation will explain the genre’s role in providing a visual experience of the re-ordered universe, strengthening absolute monarchical power through the metaphor of the Sun King, and portraying state power and social hierarchies as earthly reflections of Copernicus’s system of celestial harmonies.

How might we create an artefact that endures space travel and summarises Earth in its geological, environmental, biological, cultural, and societal aspects?

The Golden Records 2.0 project was conceived to compile different perspectives into an enduring artefact that can remain in space long after humanity is gone, serving as a repository for life on Earth that will be accessible to extraterrestrials. Inspired by the 1977 Voyager Golden Records — originally envisioned by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, among others — Golden Records 2.0 revisits the original project's objectives while enhancing the content and medium, using resources and technology unavailable at the time.

This second iteration of the Golden Records compiles a variety of cultures to capture the essence and uniqueness of humanity. To achieve this, it integrates perspectives from an international team of students (grades 9-12), professors, and specialists in various fields, including project coordinator Jon Lomberg, the Design Director for the original Golden Records. The artefact will represent many aspects of life on Earth, including music, ambient sounds, multi-language greetings, pictures of sequential actions, landscapes, living beings, descriptions and explanations of basic mathematical processes, and a map of Earth’s location in the universe.

Taking advantage of technological advancements over the past half-century, the artefact will be built using cutting-edge silica storage technology in partnership with Microsoft’s Project Silica. This not only allows for the inclusion of significantly more content than the 1977 Golden Records but also accommodates multiple media formats, such as videos, audio files, GIFs, images, and more. In addition to fabricating the silica message itself, we are also designing and constructing a protective case to ensure the glass can be safely packaged and launched into space.

Giant Comets and Their Impacts Through Time 

This talk briefly introduces the subject of comets and their origin, emphasising the relatively recent discovery of 'giant' comets, defined to be objects for which the comet nucleus has a diameter greater than 50 km. This is more than ten times the size of Halley’s comet, 25 times its surface area, and 125 times its mass. ‘Giants’ can range in size up to more than 250 km and occur in the long-period and variable short-period comet populations. They enter the inner solar system at frequencies of the order of one per 100,000 years.  Such a comet would likely become the most prominent object in the sky other than the Sun and Moon, and debris from its evolution in the inner solar system would produce a much more ‘active’ sky than that experienced today.   Evidence for the most recent ‘giant’, believed to be the progenitor of Comet Encke, suggests that such an object may have arrived in near-Earth space between 10 and 20 thousand years ago, possibly providing inspiration for mankind’s early interest in the sky; a reason for people’s invention and worship of sky-gods; and a motivation for the building of megalithic monuments with astronomical and calendrical associations. 

When They Come: Reimagining Earth-Meteorite Relations Through Art

Recent scientific insights confirm Earth's continuous exchange of matter with the solar system, echoing Tony Milligan’s assertion that “asteroids can do a great deal to us and for us.” This paper explores art projects that reinterpret celestial encounters as agents of change and transformation rather than mere sources of destruction. By examining artworks addressing mutual impacts and exchanges, the discussion highlights Earth’s environmental responses—abiotic, biotic, cultural, and technological—to celestial bodies, as well as Earth’s reciprocal effects on these objects. The analysis draws on Rosie Braidotti’s notion of the planetary-cosmic continuum and Jacques Derrida’s concepts of hospitality and gift to frame these artistic engagements with meteorite encounters.

Case studies include Sideral by Marcela Armas and Gilberto Esparza, which uses sound to explore the material and cultural significance of meteorite landing sites, and Katie Paterson’s Campo del Cielo, where recasting a meteorite metaphorically transforms its memory and identity through human interaction. The paper also examines Bethany Rigby’s Mining the Skies, which critiques asteroid mining by juxtaposing ethical considerations with legal frameworks, framing celestial environments as remnants of pristine wilderness.

These projects collectively underscore the mutual response-ability of Earth and the cosmos, reshaping narratives of vulnerability, ethics, and worldmaking in an era of interstellar exchange. This paper offers a fresh perspective on planetary and cosmic relationships, contributing to broader discussions on environmental ethics and the cultural implications of space exploration.

Dark Skies and Cosmic Reflection: Grief, Time, and the Climate Crisis

The artist will share a presentation that considers the philosophical impacts of dark skies, and how having access to them can help us to understand better loss and grief, our individual connection to the deep time history of Earth and the Universe, and the cosmic significance of the climate crisis. Louise will share her 2024 British Council-funded project, Earth, a Cosmic Spectacle which was developed in collaboration with astronomer Dr Ian Griffin and Tūhura Otago Museum in Aotearoa New Zealand. In this project, the artist invited astronomers, biologists, and geologists to gaze into the dark skies of New Zealand and anonymously write a letter exploring how their knowledge of Earth's long and gradual development, starting from the dawn of the Universe, shapes their understanding of the cosmic significance of the climate crisis.

Louise will also discuss her chapter, The Transparency of Night (link to chapter), which she contributed to Dark Skies: Places, Practices, Communities, edited by Tim Edensor and Nick Dunn and published by Routledge in late November 2023. The abstract is below:

"As light pollution increases around the world, humanity is losing a symbolic visual connection to the cosmos, shared by our ancestors throughout history. The author examines how living under the dark skies of Aotearoa, New Zealand, has influenced her artistic and curatorial practice and how her artwork can invite the audience to explore their own changing relationship with the night. Through the discussion of five artistic projects, this chapter explores how living under dark skies, or light-polluted skies, can change our perception of grief, the climate crisis, and Earth’s deep-time history and future. Each of the projects has started with a fundamental connection to the night sky and reflects the author’s changing understanding of life, death, darkness, and light”.

Reading the Milky Way Across the Southern Continents

For the southern hemisphere viewers across time, the full arc of the Milky Way is visible in the night sky. This paper will consider the implications and inspiration of southern indigenous readings of our galaxy—readings that have taken strikingly similar form across the southern continents. While Indigenous Australian peoples have seen a dark emu shape in the night sky, and used stories of the celestial bird to mark the seasons, Khoikhoi peoples similarly outlined a running or brooding ostrich, while the Mocovi people of Brazil discerned a rhea. The paper will end with the question of whether these aligned readings by ancient southern peoples might allow us to construe lateral imaginative formations shared around the hemisphere.

Scientific Discovery through Astronomical Illustration: A Visual History of the Ring Nebula

The Ring Nebula, the first named planetary nebula and part of the Messier Catalogue, has long held the interest of professional and amateur astronomers alike. Our understanding of this nebula has evolved over centuries of observations, discussions, and imaging. From the first sighting to confirmation of a central star and revelations that perhaps its shape was not a ring after all, astronomers have created and studied a multitude of images to make these discoveries. Before the advent of photography, astronomers relied on illustrations of celestial objects, which were widely circulated between observatories and publications. These illustrations were imperative for international cooperation and scientific advancement, especially as telescope capability differed across institutions. Even as technology advanced and astrophotography became more viable, illustrations were used for comparison and verification of early photos. As astrophotography developed and became a reliable method for documenting celestial objects, earlier discoveries were cemented, and new information came to light. Though technology continues to advance and new methods for capturing the sky are utilised, these illustrations and early photographs created the foundation of much astronomical knowledge. By examining the robust visual history of the Ring Nebula, we can see in real time how integral astronomical illustrations and early astrophotography were to scientific development and discovery in the late 19th century.

Engendering a Sense of Place through the Astronomical Observatories of Ireland

Ireland has three world-famous historic observatories at Armagh, Birr, and Dunsink.   Imbued with a deep scientific heritage, they remain active centres of astronomy today where frontline research is still conducted, alongside active public programmes in education and outreach.  They also provide pride and a sense of place to their local communities, surrounded by parklands where people can wander, experience nature, and reflect.

To maintain these interlocking strands in the modern era of course, presents many challenges.  The three observatories have forged a new contemporary partnership – the Astronomical Observatories of Ireland – to help meet them.  The partnership is based on three pillars of cooperation: research, heritage, and placemaking.  These are underpinned by a shared history that extends across four centuries of collaboration in science. 

In this presentation, we will discuss how these facets have come together and the hurdles we must overcome to go forward, to preserve and conserve while providing a beacon for the public communication of science in a challenging world. 

A focus will be given to our aspirations to seek UNESCO World Heritage inscription.  This would be a trans-national nomination supported by the Irish and UK governments.  It is based around their heritage in representing the foundations of the modern astronomical observatory and the development of the telescope, together with the contributions to understanding humanity’s place in the cosmos that they engendered.  Much of this heritage can still be experienced in situ at the observatories today, in a similar form to when their instruments were being used for pioneering science.  Their stories are deep and interconnected, being bound to the tangible heritage that is still evident.  They provide a sense of place that forms the bedrock to the research, education, and outreach programmes that are now being conducted in the observatories.

Sun Divination and the Twelve Days of Christmas

The earliest example of predictions involving the sun as a positive omen is in the Babylonian Enuma Anu Enlil. Here, the omens occur almost entirely on the first day of the month, after the sighting of the new moon. The tablets give omens for every month, in calendrical order, which tend to happen at sunrise when the sun is sighted in a cloud of a particular colour.  Solar prognostics occur in the twelve lunar months of the Babylonian calendar. The positive symbolism of the sun and its subsequent association with Christ have continued through the centuries, and the prophecies arising from the twelve lunar months of the Babylonian calendar were eventually replaced by the twelve nights of Christmas, in order to give the predictions a Christian significance.

In this talk, I shall consider this rare type of prognostication which bases its predictions on the shining of the sun during the twelve days of Christmas. I shall discuss the textual transmission of this type of divinatory treatise, as it appears in medieval manuscripts from the 11th to the 16th centuries in Latin, Old and Middle English English and  Middle High German. I shall look at the symbolism of the sun and the importance of the timeframe of the Twelve Days of Christmas in relation to computistical studies.

Croagh Patrick: The Saint, the Serpent and the Sun

Croagh Patrick, locally known as ‘The Reek’, is a 764-meter mountain located on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. It has been a site of spiritual significance since at least the Neolithic period. Appropriated by Christianity, it became associated with St. Patrick, who is linked to the mountain through the famous Irish Christian myth in which he vanquishes the serpent god Crom Cruach. Once a place of pre-Christian rituals and pilgrimage, Croagh Patrick now hosts approximately 20,000 pilgrims on ‘Reek Sunday’, the last Sunday in July.

The mountain is also connected to the figure of St. Patrick in his own writings, particularly in his Confession, where he invokes the Sun (Helias) to free him "from all misery." This presentation will explore the enduring connection between Croagh Patrick and the Sun, examining both the mythological and folkloric traditions that persist today. A key focus will be the biannual gatherings at the Neolithic Boheh Stone, where large crowds gather to observe the rare spectacle of the setting Sun appearing to roll down the slopes of Croagh Patrick, as well as the tradition of ascending the mountain the night before Reek Sunday to witness the sunrise from its summit.

Celestial harmony in French 14th-century culture

Timaeus, the supposedly Pythagorean main character of Plato’s eponymous dialogue, taught his listeners how God created the world soul, driving the heavenly bodies thanks to the numbers of a harmonic musical scale. The human soul, created on the same pattern, could thus harmonise with the heaven by the mediation of musical order, an order and harmony which would serve subsequently as a justification for the sisterhood of music and astronomy in the general frame of the musica mundana, the music of the world.

During the XIVth century, alongside the development of French polyphony, this ancient theme of a music of the spheres was revived and renewed in scientific and artistic circles of the French Kingdom. In the middle of his study on the measurement of curvilinear surfaces, in his De arte mensurandi, Jean de Murs made a surprising digression to show that the musical consonances are hidden in geometric figures constructed from different polygons inscribed in a circle. From there, he concluded the possibility of knowing scientifically the celestial harmony: theoretical geometry can teach us something about heaven because harmony can be found in both.

In a similar way, Nicole Oresme inserted in his famous Algorismus proportionum surprising calculi about polygons inscribed in a circle, “as a funny exercise (ludendo)”. Far from being mere mathematical entertainment, those studies were parts of the destruction of an ancient model of celestial harmony identified as “arithmetic” and Pythagorean, a destruction fulfilled in his De incommensurabilitate. Of the new geometrical model, Evrard de Conty gave a more popular version in his Livre des Échecs Amoureux Moralisés.

I propose to present and study this new understanding of celestial harmony. I shall start from the geometrical arguments, explain how this geometry is related to heaven, and try to understand the musical content of those astronomical ideas.

The Zodiac and Mary. Stellar Metaphors and the Marvellous in the Work of Serafino Montorio

This research explores the themes of a Marian legend, The Zodiac of Mary, written by the Dominican Father Serafino Montorio and published in Naples in 1715. The work uses the intangible culture of astronomy as a pretext to celebrate the Virgin. Rooted in the cultural substratum of Magna Graecia, the text develops from the Hermetic principle "as above, so below" and outlines a didactic framework for the values introduced by Christianity.

The text gathers marvellous narratives related to the most important Marian miraculous effigies of the Kingdom of Naples, organising them geographically and associating them with the twelve zodiacal constellations. This approach reflects a metaphorical elaboration that became central to Mariological speculation from the 17th century onwards.

Cosmic landscapes of Armagh Observatory Astropark

The Astropark at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium is a unique site in which scientific understandings of outer space are conveyed through a cosmic landscape of scale models, bodies in motion, and a guided walk to the origin of the universe. It is one example of a culture of land art whereby the form of landscape acts as a medium to convey the vastness of the cosmos, alongside the agency (or insignificance) of the human being in this context. More broadly, scale models of the solar system exist in a multitude of forms, from intricate miniature orreries to the 8.5-kilometre-long installation by artist Oliver Jeffers, while the universe continues to be modelled through scientific and artistic representations in attempts to understand and communicate its mysteries. This presentation will describe the origins of the Armagh Astropark in the 1990s, its design principles and main features, while outlining broader research aims around understanding audience interactions with the site and its plans for the future.

Re-evaluating Prehistoric Avenues in Britain: Landscapes, Skyscapes, and Cosmological Connections

An article published in the summer of 2024 in PAST, the newsletter of the Prehistoric Society, presented a definition of prehistoric avenues constructed in Britain:

"An avenue is defined as a type of open-ended path, routeway, or corridor constructed during the period 4000–1500 BC whose near-parallel edges are characterised by standing stones, pits, timber posts, or earthworks of varying dimensions and whose progress through the landscape either directly or tangentially approaches or departs from a ceremonial or funerary monument of some kind."

These linear structures, often neglected in contemporary research, are being reevaluated as the core component of a doctoral project at Bournemouth University. This investigation aims to understand their contextual situation within both their landscape and skyscape settings and examine any possible cosmological implications.

The project creates a comprehensive database and gazetteer of known and probable avenues while reevaluating those identified as doubtful in previous (mainly antiquarian) reports. It analyses their distribution and relationships within their ceremonial and settlement landscapes and investigates their links to solar, lunar, or other cosmological events using advanced 3D landscape reconstruction and skyscape software. 

This presentation will provide an overview of the methods used and offer some of the project’s preliminary results, particularly the outputs of statistical tools used to analyse the extent, density, orientation, and relationships of these sites within the broader Neolithic and Early Bronze Age ceremonial landscape, including their relationships to nearby hydrological features. It will also ask whether statistical analysis of the almost 90 British examples in the gazetteer and the search for astronomical patterns can offer any pieces, however small, towards completing the prehistoric cosmological jigsaw puzzle.

Astronomical and Cosmological Concepts in Christian Ethiopia and Eritrea

The highlands of Eritrea and Northern Ethiopia, a region with a written civilization dating back to the 1st millennium BCE, present a unique case of a cultural area with a long and uninterrupted manuscript tradition. Introduced to the region around the first century CE, parchment manuscripts have served as tools for knowledge transmission up to the present day. Among other materials, the manuscript culture of Christian Ethiopia and Eritrea has preserved through centuries a corpus of texts and graphical elements, including tables and diagrams, related to astronomy (and astrology) and cosmology, traditionally referred to as bāḥra ḥassāb (“Sea of Computus/Concepts”).

This tradition has absorbed a wide range of material, sometimes contradictory, from diverse origins (e.g., Hellenistic, Arabic, and European). The Christian communities of Ethiopia and Eritrea devoted significant effort to reconciling and harmonising these varied astronomical and cosmological concepts within the framework of bāḥra ḥassāb. This endeavour resulted in a distinctive and continuous written tradition that synthesises and integrates disparate influences, forming a unique system of astronomical and cosmological knowledge.

A new project, Bāḥra ḥassāb: Knowledge Transmission in Ethiopia and Eritrea From Antiquity to Modern Times, funded by the German Research Foundation and based at the University of Münster, aims to study bāḥra ḥassāb as a local epistemic tradition. Building on Otto Neugebauer’s seminal work, Ethiopic Astronomy and Computus, the project explores manuscriptological, philological, and cultural aspects of this tradition, as well as the processes of its adaptation and development over time.

This paper will introduce the primary astronomical and cosmological concepts of bāḥra ḥassāb and examine the related texts and diagrams using rich manuscript material. Additionally, it will discuss the origins of these concepts and their adaptations throughout their transmission and application.

You, Darkness: A Collaborative Project in Eco-poetry, Art, and Astronomy at Berea College

What will Gen Z remember of the Milky Way? What will be their memories of darkness? How can we as poets collaborate to explore our connection to the stars, a connection our ancestors knew for millennia—and what is lost when that connection is severed? At Berea College, I lead a group of poetry students engaging in site-specific writing centered around dark skies, trying to address this urgent ecological threat. Our dark sky poetry field trips have included a writing retreat in Big South Fork, Tennessee, at a backcountry lodge with no electricity, where most of us experienced the wildness of the Milky Way for the first time. In an old-growth forest in eastern Kentucky, we hiked through wetlands to hear spring peepers and other frog species, then spread out in a field and wrote by moonlight. My own poems examine light pollution at the intersections of capitalism, colonisation, and power, while also meditating on the spiritual connection humans have to the cosmos. In my poems and in this project with my students, I seek to reconnect with dark skies and give voice to what we are losing when we lose our connection with the night sky. By collaborating with the art department, we intend to use the dark sky poems created by our students, faculty, and local poets to create a glowing poetry installation in the forest, where poems will be screen-printed in glow-in-the-dark ink and hung from trees for nighttime viewers. This experiment would allow the poems to interact with the environment. We hope that this project could potentially be a traveling glowing poetry installation, where we could lead participants in short dark sky writing exercises in which they can contemplate their own relationships with darkness, stars, the Milky Way, and Earth’s place in the universe.

Sun, Moon, and Qur’an: Arabic Solar Months, Jewish Calendar Traditions, and the Making of an Islamic Lunar Calendar

The world’s most widely observed lunar calendar is the Islamic calendar. That this lunar-only calendar has existed within a primarily solar- and lunisolar-calendar world is remarkable. A lunisolar calendar is a lunar calendar into which an intercalary lunar month is added as the penultimate of 13 months every three years. The worldwide lunisolar innovation reflects an earthbound reality that both the sun and the moon together can function for humans as a time-reckoning system. However, when one considers either the names of the 12 Islamic months, which are, in many cases, etymologically tied to seasonality (e.g., “Rabīʿ al-ʾAwwal,” “the First Spring,” or “Jumādā ath-Thānī,” “the Second hardening,” or “Ṣaʿbān,” “branching,” or “Shawwāl,” “raised, lifted,” referring to camels’ lifted tails during the mating season, which occurs at the start of winter and the rainy season), as well as the Qur’anic instruction that God created “the sun and moon [as a medium] for reckoning [time],” (Q. 6:95; 55:5), the fact that the Islamic calendar is purely lunar is all the more significant. This paper will argue, on the basis of the text of the Qur’an, Arabic linguistic features, the Arabic-language Islamic and pre-Islamic names and features of the months, as well as the Hebrew 19-year lunisolar Metonic-cycle calendar, and recent scholarship demonstrating that pre-Islamic regional pilgrimages were tied to sea¬sons of the year and according to the same cycle as the earlier Jewish calendar, that the early Islamic/Qur’anic community most likely followed a lunisolar calendar, as well. The Islamic turn to a 12-month lunar (only) calendar and the injunction against intercalation (nasīʾ) (Q: 9:36-37) appears in all Qur’anic references to be related to a condemnation of the intentional and sometimes strategic (non-Muslim) delaying of the four sacred months during which fighting was forbidden, Rajab, Dhū al-Qaʿdah, Dhū al-Ḥijjah, and Muḥarram.

Science in Stained Glass: Exploring the Space Window of Washington National Cathedral

The Space Window of Washington National Cathedral is a unique example of astronomy and science in a Christian church. Created by artist Rodney Winfield and installed in 1974, this window is dedicated to those who work in the fields of science and technology and was inspired by NASA photographs of the Apollo 11 mission. The upper portion of the window contains a sliver of basalt from the Moon collected by the astronauts during that 1969 lunar landing. It is the only Moon rock that is not in a government institution.
This presentation will describe the motivation and history of the Cathedral's Space Window and how it follows a long tradition of astronomical representations in religious art. A study of primary sources and Cathedral archives reveals the vibrant story of how exploration of space was chosen as a source of spiritual inspiration. Through interviews with clergy, Cathedral docents, churchgoers, and tourists, we will also explore how this window has inspired religious engagement as well as a version of the "overview effect", the cognitive shift reported by some astronauts while viewing the Earth from space which provides feelings of awe, transcendence, and universal connectedness.
The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, also known as Washington National Cathedral, is an Episcopal cathedral located in Washington, DC. Despite being constructed between 1907 and 1990, the architecture style is modeled after fourteenth century English Gothic. The church is considered unique for its interweaving of Christian iconography and national history. Along with figures of Christ, angels, and saints, there are depictions of American presidents as well as consequential figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Elie Wiesel, Rosa Parks, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Additionally, there are numerous scientific symbols throughout the Cathedral, including atoms, molecules, galaxies, comets, and Einstein's famous E=mc² equation.

The Condicio Extraterrestrialis in Eighteenth-Century German Proto-Science Fiction Literature

Since the publication of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543), Galilei’s Dialogue (1632), and Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687), a new understanding of the solar system’s cosmography became widespread, sparking various speculations about the planetary order within a multidimensional hierarchy of systems. This had a profound influence on the culture of the following century, during which literature served both as a reflection of the epistemological changes that had occurred and as an imaginative space for exploring new ways of understanding the cosmos.

In eighteenth-century Germany, narratives exploring extraterrestrial realms were both widespread and highly cherished. These works grappled with a dual challenge: on one hand, they sought to adapt to and interpret the newly structured celestial space shaped by scientific discoveries; on the other hand, they remained anchored in the Neoplatonic view of the cosmos. This tension gave rise to a new mythology of the universe, populated by living forms whose rarity and subtlety increased with their distance from Earth, culminating in the cosmic spirits of the ancient Platonic tradition. Such ideas, rooted in the concepts of the Scala Naturae and the Aurea Catena Homeri, reemerged in Kant’s Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (1766) and Johann Gottfried Herder’s writings, where they were explored from a philosophical perspective.

Within this remarkable wave of imaginative journeys into extraterrestrial space, a key turning point for our investigation is marked by the first narratives of flights to the moon and other planets, grounded in actual airship projects. This is exemplified by Eberhard Christian Kindermann’s Geschwinde Reise auf dem Lufft-Schiff nach der obern Welt (1744), which drew inspiration from the earliest prototypical flying boat designed by Francesco Lana de Terzi (Prodromo, 1670), often regarded as the father of aeronautics.

Horoscopes and Astrological Representations in the Art of Renaissance Popes: An Updated Survey

I will present a survey of all known astrological representations commissioned by the popes of the XV-XVII centuries, often in the Vatican Palace. In recent decades the catalogue has been enriched by important new acquisitions, such as the horoscopes of Alexander VI (Klingner, 2019) and Julius III (Gandolfi, 2023), the possible naturalistic sky imagined by Piermatteo d'Amelia in the Sixtine Chapel (Métral, 2021; Gandolfi, 2022), and a detailed reading of the talismanic vault of Leo X in the Hall of the Pontiffs (Rousseau, 2022). 

With a few exceptions, the development of astrological themes in papal decoration is linked to a prophetic and theological dimension that extends to the entire history of Salvation, placing biographical and dynastic events in a broad and ambitious religious context.

The beginning of the iconographic diffusion of the judicial component of the science of the stars in the Vatican court can be traced back to Nicholas V and his Niccoline Chapel in the mid-15th century (Albanese, 2023). However, papal patronage of iatromathematicians, prognosticators, and astrological texts dates back to Sylvester II and is also well documented in the Avignonese period (Boudet, 2020). On the other hand, astral iconography began to wane at the end of the 16th century, under the influence of the Counter-Reformation: horoscopes and zodiac signs are still present in the art of Paul III (Davidson, 1979), Gregory XIII (Durban, 2012), Sixtus V (Mandel, 1994) and Urban VIII (Beldon Scott, 1991), but their decline is evident. At the end of the 17th century, celestial interpretations of the papacy - halfway between courtly flattery and astral divination - are still attested to on a literary level, even by celebrities like Giovan Domenico Cassini, but the new Galilean science, with its insistence on experimentation and observation, finally erased almost all iconographic residues of astrology.

Stellar Strokes: The History of Painting Stars with Stars

This talk traces the artistic tradition of depicting stars and celestial phenomena with pigments whose elemental origins lie in the nuclear furnaces of stars themselves. It explores how, across millennia, from prehistory to the present, the very matter forged in supernovae – iron in ochres, copper in azurite, mercury in cinnabar, and the lapis lazuli that yields ultramarine – supplied painters with the materials necessary to represent the night sky and its astral wonders. Ultimately, the paper asks what  such a compelling cosmic synecdoche means for our understanding and appreciation of that fundamental dimension of any art: metaphor.

Moonlit Reflections: Italian Poets and the 1969 Moon Landing

This paper examines how major Italian writers and poets reflected on the 1969 moon landing, offering literary responses to this extraordinary milestone.

Giuseppe Ungaretti explored the contrast between human fragility and scientific achievement, grounding the moon landing in philosophical reflection. He interpreted this event as a metaphor for mankind’s desire to transcend limits and reach for the infinite. Eugenio Montale expressed both wonder and skepticism. While recognising the technological achievement as a significant milestone for humanity, he questioned its ultimate significance in the face of ongoing human suffering and existential uncertainty. Andrea Zanzotto adopted a critical stance, highlighting the alienation caused by technological progress and humanity’s growing separation from nature, offering a more critical and ecological perspective.

Through these and other authors of contemporary Italian literature inspired by the event, the moon landing emerges as a symbol of both wonder and reflection, intertwining scientific achievement with cultural and existential questions.

Introducing IAU Commission C5 Cultural Astronomy

The International Astronomical Union at its August 2024 General Assembly in Cape Town, South Africa, initiated a new commission that specialises in Cultural Astronomy. Commission C5 Cultural Astronomy will continue the exploration of archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy that was started at the Working Group level, but now will also embrace a much broader spectrum of what can be found in astronomy in culture. An exciting direction in which we are beginning to investigate is the study of astronomy found in subjects such as contemporary literature, poetry, music, and films. And this brings me to this presentation. Such analysis has not yet been conducted at this level by the IAU, and I will invite the audience to assist me by way of an interactive discussion so that I can gain insight and assistance on how best to guide the commission to proceed in these areas going forward. And, of course, INSAP 2025 is the perfect place for me to engage with those who have this expertise. This will be an enjoyable session discussing what is presently happening in contemporary Cultural Astronomy and how the IAU can expand its understanding of these aspects of astronomy. This will be most enlightening!

What do Karl Marx, Rudolf Clausius, and Paul Cézanne have in Common? The Unfolding Universe in the Art of Kazimir Malevich

The Ukrainian-born, Russian artist Kazimir Malevich pioneered the development of abstract art at the beginning of the twentieth century with his Suprematist paintings. The sheer simplicity of his geometric forms belies the complex conglomeration of sources that inform his works. Malevich believed that society was moving toward a “new reality”, something he felt was confirmed by the directions taken in the socio-political philosophy of Marxism, symbolist poetry, the religious/spiritualist teachings of movements such as Theosophy, and the paintings of Paul Cézanne. Just as importantly, Malevich saw science echoing these developments, increasingly revealing that our material reality is made up of invisible, immaterial forces. Malevich’s Suprematist paintings illustrate this move from a physical reality to an intangible one, in turn, incorporating the consequences of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, namely the idea of thermal or heat death of the universe. Visually, this adventure is announced by an eclipse of the sun in the 1913 play Victory Over the Sun, illustrated by Malevich's famous Black Square, culminating in the end of the material universe and the birth of a spiritualist one as revealed in his "White on White" series. Unsurprisingly, astronomy plays a significant role in Malevich’s painted images of the evolution of the universe.

British Writers Grappling with Neolithic Wreckage

British writers H.G. Wells, E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf grappled with notions of Deep Time, the long eons of Earth's ages, and new discoveries regarding Palaeolithic and Neolithic prehistory.  When Virginia walked the downs in Sussex, and the fields across Cornwall, the landscape appeared to her at it was in the Neolithic and Iron Age past.  She knew the hillforts, megalithic structures, stone circles, and standing stones that had been carved out of the landscape millennia ago.  Deeply embedded in her work is a visceral sense of prehistory, which she often depicted as co-existing alongside Modernity. Woolf and her colleagues reflected on Modernism's confrontation with remnants of prehistoric trackways that transected modern motorways, and the causewayed enclosures that peppered Britain and Ireland's landscapes.

At age 21, Woolf recorded in her diary an outing with her sister to Stonehenge. Of its prehistoric architecture, she wrote: "I felt as though I had run against the stark remains of an age I cannot otherwise conceive; a piece of wreckage washed up from Oblivion.... It is a matter for thought surely, if not for irony, that as one stands on the ruins of Stonehenge once can see the spire of Salisbury Cathedral." By Virginia's estimation, Stonehenge was the "more deeply impressive temple." 

Woolf, Eliot, Forster and Wells considered the 20th Century as only slightly removed from the Neolithic past.  They viewed Stone Age remains scattered across Britain as far more than the detritus of primitive humans.  Megalithic structures like Stonehenge, Trethevy Quoit, or the standing stones of Avebury represented for these writers the very foundation or backbone of what became Modernist art and science.  More importantly, each of these writers proposed how prehistory demonstrated the importance of their own creative writing for future generations.

Heavenly wonders in Ericus Erici Sorolainen's sermons

The Finnish written language emerged with the Reformation, when Mikael Agricola translated the New Testament into Finnish. One of the most significant and prolific successors to Agricola’s work was Ericus Erici Sorolainen (ca. 1546-1625). His most important work is a two-part postilla, or collection of sermons. Sorolainen lived in an interesting era. He witnessed the appearance of a new star in the sky, Tycho Brahe's supernova. He also observed several impressive comets. In keeping with the traditions of the early Reformation period, he interpreted these extraordinary celestial phenomena as signs. Sorolainen's postilla was influenced by the Wunderzeichen literature popular in Germany. In addition to comets and new stars, Sorolainen describes the causes of eclipses, stars falling from the sky, and the northern lights. He also analyzes the biblical story of the Star of Bethlehem.

Scalable Space

Northern Ireland has a strong and distinguished aerospace and defence heritage, spanning over a century. It is underpinned by a highly skilled workforce, supported by two world class universities, Queens University Belfast and Ulster University and an extensive network of further education colleges. Key investments and facilities including the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre (AMIC), Momentum One Zero- aiming to drive and substantially increase digital innovation in the region and the UK’s Digital Twin Centre in Belfast are supporting and driving regional innovation. The region's small size is an advantage, fostering a joined-up network across industry, academia, and government, working seamlessly to accelerate space technology innovation. 

Northern Ireland is the only region in the world able to trade goods freely with both Great Britain and EU markets.

In March 2025, Dr Caoimhe Archibald, the Minister for the Department for Economy NI launched the Matrix NI Science Industry Panel report ‘Building on our Strengths: Northern Ireland’s Growing Space industry’, highlighting key recommendations to support the growing space sector in the region.

This presentation will explore some of these key strengths in Northern Ireland and how this capability is being pivoted and aligned with the national and global space sector development.

Nothing but the Sun?  Lightscapes and Liminality

Many premodern monuments, whether tombs, temples/churches, observatories, or memorials, overtly framed movements of the sun on particular days of the solar cycle. This paper draws on recent findings in archaeology, archaeoastronomy, and the history of art and architecture that have brought greater specificity to our understanding of the design of architecture and art in relation to such alignments. Via contemporary anthropology, aesthetics, and critical theory, however, it takes the information in a new interpretive direction by examining how premodern astronomical knowledge underlay an experience of liminal transformation in ritual. How the invitation to such experience was structured and conditioned by built works, how decoration contributed, whether the invitation succeeded, and who the real liminar was in each case will be at the heart of a discussion of a handful of works from prehistory, the Hellenistic period, and early Byzantium. The centrality of habitable space, defined vantage points, the “performance” of mesmerising light, and broadly shared experience mark all the successful examples. A handful of works of modern site-specific art will bring the topic closer to our own day and the ways in which artists continue to engage the sun and specifics of light and seasons in distinctive geographical locales.

The New Space Age: Real and Imagined

We’re seeing the birth of a new age of space travel and exploration. The first space race was dominated by a geopolitical contest between the United States and the Soviet Union. Half a century after humans last set foot on the Moon, it seemed we were stuck in Earth orbit, just half a day’s drive straight up. But now, the commercial space industry is booming. Fewer than 700 people have experienced the thrill of zero gravity, but the door is opening to space tourism as reusable rockets dramatically lower the cost to Earth orbit. SpaceX and Blue Origin are leading the charge, and with almost no laws or regulations applying to off-Earth activity, they have carte blanche to create a new space age. This presentation will explore the spectrum of possibilities enabled in this new phase of space exploration, ranging from hard science to science fiction. Space travel is still subject to the limits of chemical fuels and the obdurate physics of the rocket equation. Nevertheless, we’re within sight of large numbers of space tourists, orbiting hotels, the first baby born off-Earth, and Elon Musk’s fever dream of a million people on Mars. Colonists on Mars are likely to engage in gene editing and biohacking, raising profound ethical issues. They might cut the umbilical cord to Earth and become a new human species. Traveling to the nearest stars will require new forms of propulsion and suspended animation, unless we sent embryo starships, where the humans are raised by robot nannies at their destination. Our future in space will encompass utopian and dystopian narratives. This talk will start with current capabilities and speculate what we might be doing in space in ten, fifty, and a hundred years.

Tracing celestial bodies over Normandy:  From Monet's Impression Sunrise to Hockney's Moon Room.

Normandie is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, which began in Le Havre with Monet's precise study of the sunrise over the harbour in 1874. In fact, historians can date not only the exact day but even the hour of his painting thanks to the angle of the sunrise on the horizon and the level of the tide. Monet went on to trace the effects of sunlight passing over the facade of Rouen's Cathedral hour by hour with a series of some 30 paintings. Hockney, who was living in Le Pays d'Auge throughout Covid, was initially much inspired by Impressionism for his own landscapes, including a tablet-drawn, 80-meter-long frieze, A Year in Normandy, representing the 4 seasons. Then, in 2024, he shifts to focus on the moon instead of the sun, identifying the former as "the mirror-ambassador for the sun". Hockney records precise nocturne views of the moon's phases on a particular date seen from his home in northern France. He calls his series: Moon Room. Its rich, deep palette is in the spirit of Van Gogh's Starry Night and Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold. What I found most fascinating about Hockney's images is that he drew them all on an iPad. His nocturnes are equally done en plein air but with just the glow of the screen to work with at night. He then printed them off on large sheets of paper mounted on aluminum. His innovative tools and materials give a modern twist to landscape painting by replacing those Impressionist brushstrokes with high-tech clicks on the iPad menu for digital textured lines and fill-in zones... thereby achieving a 21st-century artist's twist on the 'Normandy' or 'Moon' Landing.

Constructing the Universe: Henrietta Leavitt, Harvard's Global Observatories, and the Materiality of Scientific Empire

This paper investigates the entanglements of coloniality, gender, and materiality in the history of astrophysical discovery, focusing on Henrietta Leavitt’s groundbreaking work on Cepheid variables and its reliance on Harvard Observatory’s imperial network. While Leavitt’s discoveries are celebrated for enabling Edwin Hubble’s formulation of an expanding universe, less acknowledged are the structures of extraction and global labor underpinning her achievements. Harvard’s establishment of observatories in Peru and South Africa exemplifies the intersection of colonial practices with the pursuit of scientific progress, leveraging local environments and labour to secure astronomical data critical to Western epistemic projects.

Philanthropy, such as that of Uriah A. Boyden, also played a pivotal role, underwriting telescopes and observatories while encoding imperial ambitions within scientific advancement. These dynamics invite parallels to contemporary astronomical endeavors like the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), which, spanning South Africa and Australia, continues to depend on transnational collaborations entangled with neo-colonial geopolitics.

Deploying Saidiya Hartman’s methodology of the “wayward,” this paper interrogates the materiality of the instruments and networks that facilitated Leavitt’s breakthroughs, drawing connections to broader systems of racial capitalism and resource extraction. By placing historical narratives in dialogue with modern developments such as the SKA, this paper reframes astronomical history as part of an ongoing colonial entanglement where past, present, and future remain interwoven.

Ultimately, the paper contributes to a critical reexamination of how the material processes and infrastructures of science—both historical and contemporary—operate within frameworks of inequality, asking how we might construct more equitable models for collaborative global research.

Celestial Phenomena and Identity Formation in Rusian-Polovtsian Relations (1060s–1100s)

This paper examines celestial phenomena in the context of Rusian-Polovtsian relations during the 1060s to early 1100s and explores how these phenomena shaped both Rusian and Polovtsian identities.

According to the Primary Chronicle, a "bloody star in the night sky" appeared in 1065–66. This celestial phenomenon was interpreted by the chronicler as a divine sign foretelling the arrival of the pagan Polovtsians along the Rusian-steppe border. Following their emergence, the Polovtsians established dominance in the steppe region, defeated key Rusian leaders (Iaroslav, Sviatoslav, and Vsevolod) in 1068, and devastated the southern frontier principalities of Rus'.

In the 1090s, the confrontation between Rusian leaders and the nomads intensified. In the early 1100s, the Primary Chronicle recorded the appearance of a "pillar of light from the sky" over Kyiv, which moved across the city. This phenomenon was interpreted as a divine omen predicting the forthcoming battles of 1103 and 1111, in which the Polovtsians were decisively defeated with God’s favor.

This paper will first analyse these celestial phenomena as both natural and supernatural events, focusing on how they were perceived and interpreted at the time. Secondly, the "expectations" and "commitments" of Rusian and Polovtsian leaders (e.g., Volodymyr II Monomakh [1053–1125] and Khan O(A)trak will be examined within the framework of Identity Theory. Lastly, the connection between emotions, celestial phenomena, and their role in shaping Rusian-Polovtsian relations will be explored through the lens of Collective Identity Theory.

Celestial Impact

In 2024, more than 800 artists and more than 70 institutions in southern California, from Santa Barbara to San Diego, responded with exhibits and programming to fulfill the theme of the Getty Museum’s third and most monumental Pacific Standard Time multi-museum initiative, PST ART: Art & Science Collide. The Pacific Standard Time series, inaugurated in 2011, is largest art event in the U.S, and the author was closely affiliated with this latest incarnation since its earliest conceptualisation at the Getty in 2018. Several of these Art & Science Collide exhibits deliberately emphasised the intersection of astronomy and art. They illustrated the diversity of responses to the sky—from deep antiquity to the present—and were deliberately designed to demonstrate celestial connections across time and space. All of the astronomically oriented shows—at Getty, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Diego Museum of Art, Palm Springs Art Museum, Brand Library & Art Center, Caltech, and Griffith Observatory—are spotlighted here to outline their content, purpose, and perspective on the nature of the interaction between astronomy and art. They demonstrate on a public scale the growth of interest in the inspiration of astronomical phenomena and in better understanding of the relation between astronomy and culture.

Pacific Standard Universe: Art, Cosmology, California

Ancient symbols from around the world star in Pacific Standard Universe, a 35-minute animated film produced by Griffith Observatory and Griffith Observatory Foundation and premiered in 2024 for the Getty Museum’s prodigious multi-institutional art event, PST ART: Art & Science Collide. Presented free many times each day at Griffith Observatory, the story has not been heard or told before. The film, itself an artwork, is about the way Southern California turned the universe into something different. It shows how people across time and cultures understood the cosmos with image and art…until they didn’t. That change happened in southern California almost a hundred years ago. The all-star cast includes the Aztec Calendar Stone, Chumash rock art, ancient Beijing’s Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, Giza’s pyramids and the Dendera Zodiac, the Farnese Atlas, Tibetan Buddhist mandala sandpaintings, Medieval maps of the universe, and more.

'Moon Beauties' in Medieval Arabic Sufi Poetry

Within this conference’s focus on the skies, this paper concentrates especially on the moon. In particular, it studies the phenomenon of ‘moon beauties’ in medieval Arabic Sufi poetry. The term ‘moon beauties’ has been coined by Omid Safi (The Moon: A Voyage Through Time, ed. Christiane Gruber (2019), pp. 35-44) to describe the phenomenon throughout medieval Islamic and pre-Islamic poetry of the moon being invoked to describe the beauty of one who is beloved. The image was such a common one that philosopher and physician Avicenna (980-1037) gives the phrase ‘as beautiful as the moon’ as a basic example in his model of the ‘imaginative syllogism’ (see further Deborah Black, ‘The “Imaginative Syllogism” in Arabic Philosophy’ (1989), 242-267)

This paper focuses on how medieval Sufi poets reappropriated this image to describe the beauty of the Divine Beloved, Allah. Focus will rest on two Andalusian Sufi poets in particular, writing in Arabic: Muḥyiddin Ibn ʿArabī (1165-1240) and Abu al-Ḥasan al-Shushtarī (1212-1269). Shushtarī refers to the moon of the night when compared to the lover’s own moon, concluding that the moon simply cannot compete with the beauty of the Divine ‘Moon’. For Ibn ʿArabī, the moon might be compared to the ‘Perfect Human Being’, the human soul reflecting the Divine, as the moon reflects the sun. But in Ibn ʿArabī’s poetry too, the moon is representative of the Divine Himself: the ‘moon beauties’ image is found everywhere in Ibn ʿArabī’s collection of poems, the Tarjuman al-Ashwaq (The Interpreter of Desires of The Translator of Desires,) where it captures the incomparable beauty of the Divine Beloved. Ibn ʿArabī also uses his poetry to show how language itself—in this case, the image of ‘moon beauties’—is inevitably limited when attempting to convey or reach the Divine.

The Episcope

We are now used to seeing TV dish antennas pointed skywards to transmit messages and news. We also see many satellites equipped with mirrors moving between the stars to transmit information.  This may seem new to us, but we know of many examples in pseudo-historical or legendary sources from antiquity and medieval or Renaissance literature that tell us of such devices long before the modern era. For example, the great mirror that is said to have stood at the top of the tower in Alexandria. These reflectors would have enabled telescopic vision, or they were incendiary mirrors, or mirrors used for long-distance communications, sometimes using the moon as a celestial reflector. In fact, all these instruments are of the Cassegrain telescope type.

In the cathedral of Saint-Lizier de Couserans, I noticed certain features in the north window of the north absidiole that led me to imagine the possible existence outside this opening of such a concave mirror equipped with a lens at its focal point, which instrument would have been mobile in order to be able to observe more accurately the movements of the moon light at the time of the major lunistice. It was only then, during this study, that I also noticed that the main piece of jewellery in the Saint-Lizier reliquary was a pendant made of a plano-convex lens covering an enamel-on-metal portrait of the bishop against a starry sky. This could have been the lens of the system supposedly built according to the principles of a Cassegrain telescope. But in this case, the same instrument could also have been used to project the image of the bishop in a darkroom. Such projections also appear in the literature of past centuries, describing miraculous apparitions.

Ancient Echoes: Soundscapes Across Worlds exhibit

Ancient Echoes-Soundscapes Across Worlds, part of the Blended Worlds-Experiments in Interplanetary Imagination exhibit (NASA-JPL-Getty-PST), is a sonic and moving image art installation that engages viewers to think critically about the privilege of our human life through the lens of water and the 13.8-billion-year-old tapestry that led to this present moment. The objectives of this exhibit are twofold: (1) to create greater empathy through soundscape and (2) to acknowledge the tapestry of life through the story of water. This work is rooted in the emerging academic field of post-humanism through an Indigenous perspective with a focus on sound-based art. Sound is presented as a post-object art form that connects us directly to nature, to the non-human organic life forms throughout time and space, and our roles and responsibilities in this interconnected tapestry of life.

Ancient Echoes: Soundscapes Across Worlds is a powerful and thought-provoking artwork that asks the question, “How might water unite life across worlds?” The sage ring aligned to the cardinal directions creates a compass. The soundscape tapestry it contains is an experiment that gives physical form to the artist’s Indigenous process of “Putting Down Thanks”. Using a robust collection of raw audio collected from collaborators, a soundscape was created that invites reflection on our relationship with water and the interconnectedness of life across time and space. To explore this idea further, collaboration with Corey Cochrane (NASA JPL- Europa Clipper) was established. Through this partnership, the sonification of Europa’s induced magnetic field was woven into the soundscape, connecting the scientific study of distant worlds with the timeless, universal element of water that sustains life on Earth. The art does not simply serve as a reflection of the world; it invites the viewer to engage with it in new and meaningful ways, prompting us to reconsider our place in the universe.

Comets, Monsters, and the Apocalypse: Examining al-Barzanjī’s al-Išā’a li-ašrãṭ al-sā’a and its Connection to Lubieniecki’s Theatrum Cometicum

When I was reading Muslim theologian Muḥammad bin ‘Abd al-Rasūl al-Barzanjī’s (1630-1691) apocalyptic work, al-Išā’a li-ašrãṭ al-sā’a (Disseminating the Hour’s Portents), I was struck by a comment the author added six months after the completion of his work. According to al-Barzanjī, a peculiar book of illustrated images arrived at the Ottoman court in Edirne from the “Land of the Christians.” One image depicted a terrifying hybrid monster that al-Barzanjī believed had appeared in the "Mountains of the Franks" when the "tailed star" of 1664 was sighted. When I examined al-Barzanjī's description of the terrifying monster, I realised he was referring to Western astronomical maps. After further research, I discovered a book with illustrations that closely matched the images al-Barzanjī had described: Theatrum Cometicum (Theatre of Comets), compiled by Polish astronomer Stanislaw Lubieniecki (1623-1675) shortly after the appearance of two consecutive comets in the years 1664-1665 CE. The first of these, scientifically known as C/1664 W1, was visible in Europe from December 1664 CE till February 1665 CE. It was immediately followed by comet C/1665 F1, which was visible from March to April 1665 CE. Theatrum Cometicum was supplemented with numerous illustrated astronomical maps that showcase the position and trajectory of the observed comets against a backdrop of zodiacal figures drawn in the Western style.

Through an analysis of the two mentioned primary sources, this paper aims to answer the following questions: What kind of stories did the comets of 1664-1665 offer to different spectators in different regions? And, how did Theatrum Cometicum, as a visual narrative of these astronomical events, present them to its spectators? How did these stories mutate and transform? What rendered them adaptable to different forms and shapes? In other words, what enabled them to slip, with admirable agility, through filters of language, culture, ideology, and cosmology?

Democracy in the Planetarium - Armagh Planetarium in the 1980s

This paper intends to examine how the Armagh Planetarium explored new techniques of democratising astronomy and the cosmos in the mid-1980s. It will use two case studies to this end: Space Odyssey and Encyclopedia Galactica.

'Space Odyssey' was a planetarium dome show that required a complex system of proprietary technology developed by the Armagh Planetarium to allow guests to control the dome. This was a critical shift from the 'German' and 'American' (Marche, 2005) method of planetarium lecturing and marked a global change in attitude towards the place of the audience in the planetarium dome. Encyclopedia Galactica was a new exhibition, opened in 1987, built on leading computer technology and foreshadowing the world of the Internet and Search Engines that are commonplace today. Intended to entertain and educate, it represented a futuristic space in which computers, monitors, and media were deployed to answer questions posed by the audience. Both of these case studies explored new egalitarian methods of engagement that continue to influence how astronomy is taught around the world to this day. By examining the didactic intentions and the influence of other institutions, this paper will use archival sources to track how global networks of technology were brought to a small planetarium in Northern Ireland.

The Astrological Anthology of Wenceslas IV and the Comet of 1402: An Intersection of Art, Science, and Politics

Manuscript Clm 826, preserved in Munich’s Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, is a beautifully illuminated astrological compendium created at the court of King Wenceslas IV of Bohemia (Nuremberg, 1361–Prague, 1419) in Prague at some point between 1403 and 1419. Its first folio features an astrological wheel of the universe where, in the sublunar sphere, between the layers of fire and air, a small comet is depicted. This proposal aims to investigate the reasons behind this unusual inclusion of a comet in a universal depiction of the heavens. Was it a generic representation of the cometary phenomenon, or did it document the appearance of a specific historical comet?

To answer this question, we will explore how and when comets were depicted during the Late Middle Ages, a subject that intertwines the history of art and science. Since ancient times, comets have been observed as exceptional phenomena and, from very early on, were associated with catastrophic events such as earthquakes, pestilences, or royal deaths. As a result of both the transmission of earlier sources and direct observation of the night sky, a rich cometary iconography developed during the 13th to 15th centuries, most prominently expressed in scientific manuscripts and illuminated chronicles.

We propose that the drawing in Clm 826 corresponds to the famous comet of the year 1402, recorded throughout Europe and interpreted by Wenceslas IV’s court astrologer, Konrad Kyeser (1366–1405), as a presage of his lord’s dethronement by his brother, the future Emperor Sigismund. By examining the manuscript’s illumination alongside textual sources and medieval astronomical records, we aim to contextualise the comet’s depiction within the scientific and political milieu of Wenceslas IV’s court.

No Planet B – The Pressing Need to Assess the Climate Impacts of Astronomy

We are in the midst of a climate crisis of our own creation. Anthropogenic climate change is one of the greatest current threats to humanity, with a disastrous potential impact if we do not act strongly enough to reduce its severity and mitigate its impacts. Already, we are experiencing an increase in extreme weather events, hastened melting of the polar ice cap,s and further death of coral reefs. It is our responsibility to take what action we can to protect our planet.

There is often the misconception that with the continued development of science, we could escape our planet and, through that, the consequences of our past actions. However, that is unlikely to be the case. We have not yet discovered an ‘Earth analogue’ planet elsewhere in our galaxy. The settlement of Mars or elsewhere would require extensive efforts and new technologies. Therefore, it is important to emphasise that there is no ‘Planet B’, and in the words of Carl Sagan, ‘Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand’.

As astronomers, it is vital that we set a good precedent for society and act to limit the emissions from our research. Space missions, extensive air travel, and observatories can produce significant greenhouse gas emissions. This is an often overlooked area within our field, however, it is vital to consider in order to ensure the sustainability and viability of future research.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will soon begin its 10-Year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), which will produce an unprecedented amount of daily data. The immense scale of data processing required for this and other new observatories will have significant carbon dioxide emissions. This provides an excellent focus for our emissions reduction efforts and allows us to set a strong pro-environment precedent.

Mesca Ulad and the Axis Mundi at Uisneach: where the land reflects the sky

The tale Mesca Ulad (The Intoxication of the Ulstermen) describes the partition of Ulster into three. Extrapolating this division to Ireland’s other three provinces implies that Ireland was once divided into twelve parts, each radiating out from an Axis Mundi at Uisneach, in the geogrphical centre of Ireland — a twelvefold division similar to that described by Plato, and practiced by the Etruscans, Hebrews, Greeks and Babylonians in the Iron Age. So even though Mesca Ulad was not written until a millennium after the story was set (in the first century BC/AD), the story seems to have retained awareness of an even earlier geographical system.

The twelvefold division is, of course, based on the heavens, not the land, implying that this system was designed to mirror the zodiac: as above, so below. Examination of some Irish tales offers hints that parts of the landscape (e.g., boundary lines radiating from Uisneach) were associated with particular signs of the zodiac. There are even indications that Irish tales contain a record of the precession of the equinoxes.

"THE RHYTHMS OF THE SKIES: What the poets and the people knew about the Heavens". 

Numerous references to astronomical sights and events in the poetry of the period up to and including the 19th century indicate a much greater familiarity with the night sky than exists among the current general population. This talk will look at many examples as illustrations, appreciate the beauty of the language, consider just how accurate they were, suggest why this familiarity would have been relatively common, and lament the fact that it is no longer the case! 

Inspiration poured in Concrete: Goetheanum Architecture relating to Mind and Cosmos

The Goetheanum, located in Dornach near Basel (Switzerland), was built from 1925-1929 after a model created by Dr. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the founder of Anthroposophy. The building poured of concrete is a landmark recognisable through its unique shape and size. It is debatable whether the Goetheanum aesthetics draws on organic forms informed by nature or whether it is more of a geometric structuralist structure, as Robert Klanten (2016) argued. Neither of these approaches will satisfy what < Baukunst >, Anthroposophy’s art of building, is about. The presentation will focus on how the Goetheanum is embedded in landscape and skyscape and how astronomy, especially the sun's movement throughout the year, informs the relationship between mind and cosmos. Further attention will be given to the red window and how its celestial depiction suggests pointing towards the night sky.

Devotional Dialectics: Condensing Cosmogony and Cosmology in a Late Medieval Bhakti Text from South India

The wide-ranging and eclectic body of work produced by scholars affiliated with the medieval school of Kerala mathematics includes treatises across a spectrum of genres such as grammar, medicine, religion, poetry, and drama. One such product is the Nārāyaṇīyam, a Sanskrit poetic composition of the late 16th century, composed by the poet and grammarian Melpattūr Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭatiri. Bhaṭṭatiri was trained by the polymath mathematician, Acyuta Piṣāroṭi, who is now credited with developing the reduction of the ecliptic well before Tycho Brahe, to whom this discovery is generally attributed. The Nārāyaṇīyam is well-known as a literary condensation of the pre-10th-century Śrīmad Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and is simultaneously a devotional treatise in praise of Śrī Guruvāyūrappan, the presiding deity of the temple of Guruvāyūr in central Kerala. Like the Bhāgavata, the Nārāyaṇīyam is sweeping in scope, bringing together divine legends central to the Vaiṣṇavite canon, philosophical doctrines, cosmology, sacred geography, and a wide spectrum of cultural and religious topics. This paper focuses on the medieval cosmological doctrines and theories of cosmogonal evolution reflected in the Nārāyaṇīyam and the Bhāgavata, to consider the manner in which Bhaṭṭatiri approached his project of telescoping the sprawling purāṇic account into more compact cantos. Specifically, the paper closely examines six relevant cantos of the Nārāyaṇīyam (comprising sixty-three verses in all), and the corresponding sections of the Bhāgavata (spread across Books 2-3 of its twelve-book corpus). I consider in some detail Bhaṭṭatiri’s treatment of sāṅkhya doctrinal concepts, Vedic and purāṇic creation themes and mythological accounts, and subsequent evolutionary diversification. In particular, I focus on mythic accounts of the creation of the cosmos, which are extensively described in both these works. I further consider how Bhaṭṭatiri’s re-narrativisation draws on pan-Indian accounts of time, space, and the cosmos, while orienting itself towards the creation of a highly localised sacred geography. 

“the moon-wrought flow of womanhood”: Lunar Menstrual Myths in Victorian Pornography

In his 1898 pornographic White Stains, Crowley writes about “dainty rivers of thy luscious blood,” anticipating “How my dry throat, held hard between thy hips, / Shall drain the moon-wrought flow of womanhood!” (p.106). My paper explores this association of menses with the moon in Victorian pornography, highlighting differences between lunar influences on menstruation described in scientific and pornographic texts. Smith notes in Periodoscope (1848) that the “natural periods of women are the same as the lunar revolutions in frequency, but they do not accord in time with the lunar phases” (p.17). In contrast, Knight’s Discourse on the Worship of Priapus (1865) comments that specifically the “half-moon [alludes] to the female menses” (p.4) and, in The Romance of Lust (1873-76), Mrs. Benson tells Charles that women menstruate at the full moon.

My argument has two parts. First, I establish that depictions of menstruation are a convention of Victorian pornography, regardless of the role menstruation plays in arousal; here, I draw on Lubey’s assertion that pornography “contains things in excess of sex, outside or beside sex” (p.9). Second, I argue that, through lunar menstrual myths, Victorian pornography offers insight into nineteenth-century popular beliefs about celestial connections to human sciences. The pornographic Beggar’s Benison (1892) includes a poem “all about the Zodiac, / In other words—the menses” (p.68); although astrological links to menstruation may seem to align with Showalter and Showalter’s argument that instances of menstruation in Victorian pornography are “very vague and have little documentary value” (p.86), I posit an alternative. Lubey describes pornography as “a genre indefatigably conversant with its immediate world” (p.9); I suggest that Victorian pornography’s consistent perpetuation of lunar menstrual myths indicates engagement with its immediate world well beyond what other scholars have found, in a way that does, indeed, document Victorian understandings of menstruation’s relationship with celestial bodies.

Oikoumene and Cosmos

The classical concept of the orbis terrarum (‘the inhabited world’), synonymous with the Roman Empire, profoundly shaped the Carolingian worldview. In all manner of ways, the compass of the Carolingians was oriented towards the ancient world and its conceptualisation of the world. Appropriating the classical idea of the orbis terrarum, Carolingian cultural agents in courtly, cathedral, and monastic settings created a grand narrative in which the Carolingian imperium spanned the terrestrial and celestial spheres. As Carolingian power was consolidated through conquest, imperial rule was envisaged as both centred and universal. Two abiding images intimately associated with the Carolingian empire animated Carolingian culture – the heavenly city and the universal Church. This paper will consider how the ‘city on the hill’, with its cosmic centrality, was pressed into service by Carolingian learned elites. It will show that Carolingian articulations of a hegemonic power-centre were grounded in the notion of the heavenly homeland. In creative collisions with biblical accounts of the city as the dwelling place of God and classical conceptions of Rome as the navel of the world, Jerusalem was portrayed in Carolingian sources as the centre of the world. Additionally, Carolingian thinkers mobilised stories of the expansion of the universal Church from East to West to envisage their empire as universal and eternal. By the Carolingian age, Rome and Jerusalem had become constituents of the empire. Empire was not just homeland and epicentre; it was cosmos and eternity.

“O you who was born in Nu while the sky had not yet come into being, while the Earth had not yet come” /PT spell 486 (P 338)/ – Ancient Egyptian Cosmologies and Philosophical Thought

The ancient Egyptians, at the dawn of their history, created a very detailed and precise imagery of the cosmos, its beginning, and its development. Although philosophical thought is traditionally considered to have its origins in Greece, Egyptian religious texts cannot be denied a philosophical awe of the world. This awe was supported by a great wealth of astronomical knowledge and was rooted in an admiration for the complexity of the universe and the complementary nature of seemingly opposing elements. The emphasis of this study will be on the perception of the created universe, eternity, and space in Egyptian creation accounts.

The ancient Egyptians had a highly sophisticated view of the creation of the world from a seed by the god Atum. Each primordial element of the universe represented a thoughtful piece of completeness, which the Ancients from the banks of the Nile pursued with great commitment.

The author of the proposed paper will introduce the audience to the cosmologies described in the oldest Egyptian religious ‘book,’ the Pyramid Texts, and contrast them with other religious corpora. Key concepts such as creator and demiurge, myth, logos, and other cosmological ideas will all be examined from the perspective of the Egyptian language, as the language itself is the most reliable source for understanding these notions.

Furthermore, as a broader reflection, the audience’s attention will be drawn to the influence of early cosmologies on later Egyptian beliefs and mindsets.

Space Exploration and the 500-Year Metaphor

Arguments for and against the exploration of space invariably make use of a grand metaphor – that the next 500 years of exploration will be analogous to the last 500 years of European exploration and settlement of the Americas.  That human expansion into the solar system will be similar to the past in some ways, but different from the past in other ways, is a useful framework for anticipating the triumphs and challenges that lie ahead.  This paper will examine a series of “parallels” between past and future developments, trying to gain insight into what will be humankind’s greatest adventure. 

We can regard the period roughly from 1500 to 2000 as the exploration and settlement of the New World by the European powers.  We will explore and settle the solar system from roughly 2000 to 2500.  How do we plan for the developments we can foresee, and how do we guard against challenges no one could predict?  Historical perspective can only do so much.  Still, the analogy has value.  This paper will go through several features of exploration in the past 500 years and study the degree to which we can expect similar challenges as we establish residency on the Moon, on Mars, and on space stations.

The open American landscape inspired new possibilities in the minds of European explorers, as the open landscapes of Mars and other planets will open the minds of humans to do things undreamed of on Earth.  Outer space environments will produce new music, poetry, philosophy, and an explosion of science.  No one in Columbus’ time could imagine the freedom and bounty of educational, artistic, scientific, medical, religious, and recreational institutions the new world would generate.  How many times will life on Earth be saved by scientific advances made in space? 

Sequential Lunar Observations

Inspired by both a traditional Hawaiian lunar calendar and specific Latin medieval illustrations of the lunar cycle, this paper will focus on examples in the history of lunar daily 'observations' for calendric or lunar modelling purposes across cultures. The questions under scrutiny are the following: what does the representation of such 'observations' reveal about how different civilisations understood and interpreted the importance of nightly changes in the appearance of the moon's lit surface? And what role do these 'observations' play in our understanding of the knowledge of the astronomy of the culture/s behind them? Do they play any part in the development of astronomical knowledge generally, or more specifically in a culture's modelling of lunar motion? What is their influence on scientific progress?  The study engages with cross-cultural depictions of the lunar body, as if nightly in a continuous sequence of 28+ days. These may form an illustrative component of a calendric, literary, or scientific work.  Available data will determine the scope of historical periods and cultures this analysis will incorporate.

The Condicio Extraterrestrialis in Eighteenth-Century German Proto-Science Fiction Literature

Since the publication of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543), Galilei’s Dialogue (1632), and Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687), a new understanding of the solar system’s cosmography became widespread, sparking various speculations about the planetary order within a multidimensional hierarchy of systems. This had a profound influence on the culture of the following century, during which literature served both as a reflection of the epistemological changes that had occurred and as an imaginative space for exploring new ways of understanding the cosmos.

In eighteenth-century Germany, narratives exploring extraterrestrial realms were both widespread and highly cherished. These works grappled with a dual challenge: on one hand, they sought to adapt to and interpret the newly structured celestial space shaped by scientific discoveries; on the other hand, they remained anchored in the Neoplatonic view of the cosmos. This tension gave rise to a new mythology of the universe, populated by living forms whose rarity and subtlety increased with their distance from Earth, culminating in the cosmic spirits of the ancient Platonic tradition. Such ideas, rooted in the concepts of the Scala Naturae and the Aurea Catena Homeri, reemerged in Kant’s Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (1766) and Johann Gottfried Herder’s writings, where they were explored from a philosophical perspective. Within this remarkable wave of imaginative journeys into extraterrestrial space, a key turning point for our investigation is marked by the first narratives of flights to the moon and other planets, grounded in actual airship projects. This is exemplified by Eberhard Christian Kindermann’s Geschwinde Reise auf dem Lufft-Schiff nach der obern Welt (1744), which drew inspiration from the earliest prototypical flying boat designed by Francesco Lana de Terzi (Prodromo, 1670), often regarded as the father of aeronautics.

Celestial Metaphors in the Songs and Sonets: John Donne's Astronomical Imagination

This paper explores the intricate use of astronomical imagery and metaphors in John Donne's poetry, particularly in his collection Songs and Sonets. Donne's work provides a fascinating glimpse into the intersection of literature and astronomy during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a period of significant scientific advancement and shifting cosmological paradigms.

The study examines how Donne skillfully employs various astronomical concepts, including the geocentric and heliocentric models, planetary motions, celestial spheres, and their music to convey complex emotions and philosophical ideas about love, relationships, and human existence. Of particular interest is Donne's creation of a "geocentrism of love", where lovers become the center of their own universe, mirroring contemporary debates about the structure of the cosmos.

The paper also investigates Donne's engagement with contemporary astronomical discoveries and theories, such as Galileo's observations of the Milky Way and sunspots, Kepler's laws of planetary motion, and the ongoing tension between Ptolemaic and Copernican models. By analysing poems like The Sunne Rising, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, and The Extasie, I will demonstrate how Donne's work reflects the intellectual climate of his time and the evolving understanding of the universe.

Furthermore, this research highlights Donne's innovative use of astronomical metaphors to explore themes of mutability, eternity, and the relationship between the celestial and terrestrial realms. By doing so, we gain insight into how scientific knowledge permeated literary expression during this pivotal period in the history of astronomy. This interdisciplinary approach not only sheds light on Donne's poetic genius but also offers a unique perspective on the cultural impact of astronomical advancements in the early modern period, bridging the gap between the sciences and the humanities

“The stars drew near”: the life of Georg Simon Plössl (1794 – 1868)

 “One of the bright sides of modern times is that it places the merits of excellent mechanics and opticians alongside those of professional natural scientists and that it honors and recognises every excellent achievement, no matter where it comes from.”  So wrote Austrian physicist Franz Joseph Pisko in 1868 at the death of his friend, Simon Plössl.

Simon Plössl (1794 – 1868) was a remarkably talented optician and instrument maker during Vienna’s Biedermeier era.  He was apprenticed at age 13 to a master wood turner, “the trade to which the Optici in Vienna belonged”, but in 1812, the death of his brother Georg moved Simon to assume his brother’s apprenticeship in the great Johann Friedrich Voigtländer’s optical institute.  There, his quiet and unassuming manner enabled him to absorb the processes, from mundane to most secret, of optical instrument design and fabrication.  And there too, Plössl’s skills attracted the scientific faculty of the Imperial and Royal University, who educated the young artist in technical theory, guided him to pass with honors a rigorous University exam and inspired him with innovative suggestions, and encouraged him in 1823 to establish his own optical shop.

Before long, Plössl’s inventive talent and energetic spirit would produce such a wide range of optical products that he became the nexus of a resurgence of Austrian optical science from microbiology to astronomy, while embracing everyday life with the production of spectacles and optometers for the visually impaired, field glasses for explorers and for the military, cameras lucida for artists, kaleidoscopes, peep-box optics,  projection microscopes for educators, and more. 

Fated to survive a great family tragedy, a neurological disorder, and deafness, for over half a century Simon Plössl’s innovative spirit infused Austrian creative minds with new ability.

Chasing the Stars’ Naked Eye: The Benin Tofin Fishermen Challenging Modern Telescopes in Daily Navigation

Where do Indigenous knowledge holders and their astronomical knowledge fit in the modern technoscientific future of astrophysics? This project focuses on research among the indigenous Tofin people, a West African community living primarily in southern Benin, Nigeria, Togo, and Ghana, and seeks to address this question.

Our methodology involves collecting concepts related to astronomy using the Tofin local language. Scientifically, it is fascinating to explore how local sky knowledge influences, for instance, the naming of newborns or boat-building technologies. Fieldwork has revealed that meanings in various domains are intricately aligned with knowledge of the planets and stars.

This study seeks to document the Tofin people's knowledge of the sky as a tool for daily navigation during fishing on the sea, lakes, and lagoons. It also examines how this knowledge serves as a foundation for organising social and cultural life. Beyond navigation, the cycle of the stars is used to define harvest periods, guide extensive marine navigation, and more.

During on-site expeditions, we organise evening observations with modern telescopes to compare the accuracy of the Tofin people's empirical, naked-eye knowledge with modern theoretical models. This process enables local communities to connect more effectively with future technological innovations.

In conclusion, the Tofin fishermen’s proposals to the Benin Government, based on their centuries-old experiences, offer significant contributions to improving the fishing economy and fostering the development of urban coastal areas in southern Benin Republic.

Astronomical and Cosmological Symbolism in the works of Hildegard of Bingen

The Benedictine nun Hildegard of Bingen (c1098-1179) was well-known to Popes, Emperors and clerics across Europe for her works on theology, music and medicine - and also her writings on cosmology. Philosopher, mystic and visionary, her major work Scivias (c1151) describes and illustrates her visions. Preserved in the so-called Rupertsberg manuscript, Hildegard interprets twenty-six visions, cleverly emphasising that the spiritual ideas expressed are from Divine sources (rather than risking being ignored as a woman). Her surreal images range from the frontispiece that shows her receiving divine inspiration in the form of flames descending from above – to depictions of God in the act of Creation of the Cosmos. For example, her famous illustration of ‘God, Cosmos and Humanity’ (illustration to Scivias 1:3, also known as The Cosmic egg) is a highly mysterious and symbolic interpretation of the universe – with humanity interpreted as a microcosm of the macrocosm. More specifically related to the account of Creation in Genesis I, the illustration to Scivias 2:1 shows concentric circles of blue, red and gold representing the heavens, above images of sun, moon and stars alongside roundels of the six days of Creation with planets, birds, beasts and fish, as well as human and divine figures. Hildegard also illustrated her visions concerning the four elements of which the universe is made (earth air, fire and water). Her inspiration is clearly derived from her contemplation of the universe, how it came to be and the role of God and humanity in its functioning. Hildegard’s works are receiving increasing attention in modern times due to the relevance of her thinking.

This proposal was developed out of an invited paper on ‘Fire in Medieval Painting’ for The Elements in the Medieval World, Interdisciplinary Perspectives: Volume 4, Fire (eds M Cesario et al), Leiden: Brill, date TBC.

Constructing a Narrative Cosmology: The Dream of the Rood and the Eccentric Diagrams of Byrhtferth of Ramsey

My paper will explore the cosmological ideas of two texts of the tenth century, The Dream of the Rood, a narrative poem about the crucifixion, and Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, a school text about computus, famous for its diagrams.

The Dream of the Rood is recorded in the Vercelli Book and describes the story of the crucifixion from the point of view of the cross, which narrates its life from the moment it was cut down from the corner of the forest. This point of view is without precedent in crucifixion narratives. While scholarship has explicated the theological implications of this poem, this paper will focus on aspects of medieval science and cosmology embedded within the poem, and I will compare it to a roughly contemporary classroom book, Byrhtferth’s Enchidion.

Byrhtferth of Ramsey was a student of Abbo of Fleury and lived roughly 970-1020. He created many computistical diagrams that show relationships between the heavens and the earth. While these diagrams arise from the computistical tradition, like the Dream of the Rood, they are deeply innovative and resemble nothing else that survives from the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. Several of his more elaborate diagrams encode both space and time, combining zodiacal diagrams with T-O world maps, along with diagrams of the winds, the elements, and even the ages of man. These diagrams go beyond encapsulating dimensions to encode an ideological cosmology that resonates with the ideas captured in the Dream of the Rood.

Through a close reading of both the Dream of the Rood and Byrhtferth’s diagrams, this paper will uncover a closer conception of the cosmological ideas current in the late tenth century and their connections to apocalyptic thoughts, as both the poem and Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion end in the apocalypse.

Night landscapes of the Bronze Age?  Lunula as navigational device: a working hypothesis

Across time and continents, lunulae come in a wide variety of materials and decorative patterns. On most of them, we can observe the coexistence of two distinct sets of marks, which may have been used to associate the daily rising/setting azimuths of the Sun with those of the stars, for navigational purposes.

One set of marks would have allowed the lunula to be used daily as a portable compass (by means of a pin and the Sun's shadow). Once the instrument was correctly oriented, the operator could read the second set of marks, placed inside and along the edge of the crescent-shaped body. This second set seems to correspond in all respects to what we now call a stereographic diagram of the solar path. It made it possible to locate, even during the daytime, the "houses" (rising and setting points) of stars/constellations along the horizon, thus assisting travellers in finding their orientation.

For size and quality, the well-known large Irish gold lunulae of the Bronze Age constitute a family of their own. However, they also show the coexistence of the double set of marks. In comparison, the Irish golden exemplars seem to have been much more on the speculative side, focusing on the study and in-depth knowledge of the sky. It is possible that the regular patterns of their "decoration" (the chevrons on the horns and the zigzag motifs along the edge) were impressed on the lunula by a specialised craftsman. After this, the instrument would pass into the hands of the "astronomer," who, over time, would engrave or emboss:

1. The seasonal reference stars above and between the chevrons (interpreted as stylised mountains).
2. A true observational and highly analytical map of the real sky in the wider area of the crescent.

My God, It’s Full of Stars: Abstracting the Astronomical Sublime in the Works of Alma Thomas and Aubrey Williams

In the last decade of their lives, Alma Thomas (1891-1978) and Aubrey Williams (1926-1990) each created a series of abstract expressionist ‘space’/'cosmos’ paintings. Thomas, an African American teacher and painter, was directly inspired by the technological advances of the Space Age and the images returned by the Apollo missions. Her use of abstraction to represent the firmament invokes its alluring enigma, embodying the cosmic vastness and the fragility of our planet. Williams, a Guyanese painter, called on the ecological concerns and symbolism of Mesoamerican art and cosmovision, linking it with contemporary ecological grief and his anxieties of a planetary catastrophe. Still, the power of the sublime is inescapable in his Cosmos series. Their works, when together, embody a conflicting sentiment resonant across the planet – wonder, curiosity and anxiety, followed by a striking awareness of mortality and fears of extinction.

This paper examines the relationship between visual culture, astronomical knowledge and speculative fantasies of the cosmos. It offers a comparative analysis of the artists’ celestial imagination, in addition to their contrasting concepts of futurity and nationhood, resulting from their individual engagements with cosmology, contemporary astronomical events and the stellar pursuits of global superpowers. The social landscape in which the Space Age was concurrent with the American civil rights movement and the collapse of the British Empire – and the impact of this synchronicity on twentieth-century visual culture – is integral to this analysis. The paper reconsiders interpretations of apoliticism and utopianism in Thomas’ and Williams’ space paintings due to their lack of conspicuous racial commentary.

This research has been developed as an offshoot of my planetarium show, Star Makers: Visions of the Cosmos in Art (2025), at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

Circumnavigation in Time

The movement of the Sun has guided human understanding of time and space for millennia, shaping navigation, agriculture, and cultural practices. The Circumnavigation in Time project, led by the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, explores these celestial connections by merging science, art, and the history of navigation. At its core is the solarigraphy technique, which employs pinhole cameras with an innovative approach to the photo-sensitivity of photographic paper, enabling exposure times of up to half a year on a single negative. In solarigraphy images, solar tracks appear as bright, striking trails.

This global initiative deploys 24 solarigraphy cameras, each equipped with a shutter and electronics, to synchronise "time sculptures" created from the Sun's trajectories over 4-month periods, one in each time zone around the globe.

The implementation of this ambitious project required the development of custom-built solarigraphy cameras designed to endure diverse environmental conditions while maintaining precise functionality. Each camera provides a unique visual representation of time and the Sun's motion across the sky.

Collaborating with local partners in each time zone, the project navigates logistical challenges such as customs regulations, site selection, and cultural considerations. These efforts ensure that the devices are installed in geographically and astronomically significant locations, enhancing the project's scientific and artistic value.