BS9 Astronomy

 

Urban Stargazing from the Travelling History Company

 

What can we actually see in the night sky from our back gardens without the benefit of ink black skies, Hubble space telescopes or expensive camera equipment?  And what does this have to do with history?

 

The night sky is an amazing place, on the one hand it inspires cutting edge science and space travel - our final frontier.  But as we peer at distant objects, we are also gazing back in time - celestial archaeology.  And whilst maybe we need quite a big telescope to look back to the creation of the Universe, from our gardens we can certainly see as far as Shakespeare, the Norman Conquest, the Bronze Age, human origins, our birthdays!

 

Who thought up the constellations? Do the Chinese interpret the night sky as we do in the west? What did the sky mean to people in prehistory? Is the moon made of cheese? Where is Elon Musk’s Tesla? How are we going to travel to other stars?

 

We shall be exploring these and many more ideas on Friday evenings at the scout hut on Kewstoke Road. Observing on clear nights through a selection of telescopes,  or experimentation, discussion and debate on cloudy nights. Our journey into the cosmic and human past will be accompanied by archaeological artefacts; stuff that was there at the time and part of the narrative.  This is as close as we can get, for the moment, to time travel.

 

This unique, if rather madcap,  journey in to the archaeology of the night sky, is designed to educate, inspire and engage children and parents alike into the wonders of the cosmos and our history.

 

Dates for this side of Christmas will be:

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Friday November 9th 2018

Friday November 23rd 2018

Friday 7th December 2018

Friday 21st December 2018

 

Sessions will run from 6.00 to 7.30 ish

 

Cost:  £7.50 per session per child, adults (accompanied by a child) free

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Further details of the topics we shall be exploring are available here

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To book a place, please contact us

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