Night Vision in the Late Ancient Mediterranean

Hi everyone. Just a quick note to say that our final reading group of the year is being postponed til early 2026. Stay tuned for more!

On Friday, October 24, the ARC Discovery Project, Night Vision in the Late Ancient Mediterranean launched the 'Night Visions' exhibition at Mt Stromlo Observatory. This is the result of a collaboration between the Night Vision team -- A/Prof Kylie Crabbe, Dr Sarah Gador-Whyte, Dr Tatiana Bur, and Dr Estelle Strazdins -- and ANU PhD student in Indigenous Astronomy, Peter Swanton, and A/Prof Brad Tucker from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. The permanent exhibition brings First Nations astronomical knowledges into dialogue with Greco-Roman astronomical traditions on the themes of: 'Night Visions', 'The Moon', 'Artefacts and Objects', and 'The Pleiades'. The day beforehand, we began recording vision for the video part of the project. We hope there will be much more to come from this collaboration. Watch this space! Thanks so much Tangyao Zhang for the videoing!

Very excited about the launch of Night Vision’s ‘Night Sky’ exhibition at Mt Stromlo Observatory this Friday, including the lighting of Tina’s amazing sandstone three-wicked lamp, carved by hand and with some modern tools. The 🪔 anticipates Year 2 of the project: ‘Night Light’. Tina created the lamp as part of her assessment for CLAS2013 The Muse and the Machine at ANU. Note Australia’s finest olive oil as fuel and the cotton wicks from Tina’s mop.

Our October 'Night Sky' reading group will be run by Prof Steven Green (Yale-NUS) on October 24 on the topic of 'Contellation or Consternation? Andromeda and the Politics of the Sky in Manilius' Astronomica 5. This reading group will be held in hybrid format, both in-person at ANU and online on Zoom. Register via Humantix!

Fantastic reading group this afternoon on ‘Orbs of the Heavens, and Earth?: Probing the purpose, meaning and symbolism of Roman globes', led by the impossibly knowledgable Dr Amelia Brown. Thanks everyone for coming along!

Important work - do sign if you can!

New petition wants to bring back the stars in Canberra's night skies | Region Canberra A petition calling on the Federal Government to limit light pollution has gathered more than 10,000 signatures ahead of its…

This month's reading group will be all about spherical symbolism in Roman art! Register if you haven't already done so... (apologies for the awkward US timings...)

Next month's reading group will bring together time-keeping, medicine and the night. Sign up via the Humanitix if you haven't already!

What a great first reading group led by Dr Arthur Harris discussing Greece, China, comets, and the value of cross cultural comparison!

Thanks to everyone for coming - and looking forward to the next one!

Who were the ‘astronomers’ in ancient China and the Greco-Roman world? How did one become one and earn a living? What were the priorities of observers? How were observations of transient and irregular astronomical phenomena understood and used in China and the Greco-Roman world? What might be occluded by a simple contrast of Chinese state observatories and Greek private practitioners?

Join us to discuss this, and more, next Friday 25th July at 9am AEST (= 24th July midnight London, 7pm New York, 4pm LA) with Dr Arthur Harris (University of Cambridge).