Between lights and stars: Saint Laurence’s Night at the castle

August 10 at 21:00 – August 11 at 0:30

On August 10th, on the traditional night of the shooting stars on the “Spianata Dei Signori” from 21:30 to 00:30, two telescopes, respectively pointed towards the Moon and Saturn, will allow the interested guests, to line up and observe the craters of the Moon and the planet with rings.

An astrophysicist tour, every 30 minutes, after some indications on how and what is observed at the telescopes, will invite guests to look upwards waiting for some bright trail, thus directing their attention to the theme of the evening. With simple explanations and interesting historical anecdotes, he will retrace the events that led to the understanding of the nature of shooting stars, from antiquity to the present day, passing through Galileo Galilei and Virgilio Schiaparelli, and for poetic ones traditions that, in addition to associating them with the figure of the martyr Laurence, make them able to realize the deepest human desires. After observing the lunar craters, guests will be shown a meteorite fragment of the asteroid that crashed in February 2013 in the skies of the town of Chelyabinsk, (authenticity guaranteed by Maurizio Eltri, one of italy’s largest collectors of meteorites), so as to make the experience of observing the moon and shooting stars more tangible; more effective understanding of the difference between a meteor and a meteorite and clearer what distinguishes them from a common Earth stone.

Free entry