More than a decade ago, two inventive minds teamed up and launched the Starmus Festival, an international celebration of science and music. Its creators, astronomer Garik Israelian and astronomer/musician Brian May, envisioned a week in which anyone could easily attend talks by some of the greatest minds on the planet.
I want to share this video of the sixth Starmus Festival, recently held in Yerevan, Armenia, to show the incredible and unique contents of this magical science festival. Talks by astronaut-explorers, Nobel Prize winners, astronomers, chemists, biologists, and many more highlighted a superb week like no other. We had more than 50 speakers altogether.
We put on a star party at a 1,900-year-old Greco-Roman Temple. We held an astroimaging workshop for those who want to capture their own portraits of the night sky. We shared the beauty of the cosmos with an arena crowd of 5,000 and also all around the city, with many thousands of delighted citizens. And we put on several shows that turned up the heat with some amazing rock ‘n‘ roll.
On behalf of the Starmus Board — Garik Israelian, Brian May, Richard Dawkins, Jill Tarter, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Peter Gabriel, Tony Fadell, Robert Williams, and me — I want to extend a great big thank you for this Starmus experience, and an invitation to Starmus in the future.
I ask you to stay tuned for some exciting developments to come.
—David J. Eicher
Editor of Astronomy and President of the Board of Starmus
