"The Stories in our Stars"

Three separate observatory tours will be organised, targeting each aforementioned group, with a co-created output at the end of the tour by the tour participants on myths, legends, and astronomical stories from their own respective cultures. If no stories are shared, tour facilitators will share their own stories. One such example is the constellation of Ursa Major, also known as “The Plough”, which is named after the farming equipment in the UK
and Ireland, or “Banāt Naʿsh”, a funeral procession in Islamic Astronomy. All these will reinforce cultural connections, provide space for personal reflections, and are central to our activity.

These shared stories will be written down on specially designed postcards, which will culminate in a physical and digital archive of the participants’ stories and create a lasting legacy. This event seeks to celebrate the diversity of UCL’s staff and student body, celebrating and sharing it with the wider community. As astronomy has a rather Western-centric bias, the digital archive would allow people to explore different approaches to the cosmos and understand how many personal and cultural stories circulate around science.

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