Chasing Stars in Chairs

In cooperation with Department of Communication and Arts at Roskilde University, we bring together a historian of astronomy and an astronomer (MA-student) who has just returned from Chile chasing exoplanets and extraterrestrial life with the Danish 1.54-metre telescope. They will enlighten us on how science is done and how the little things have an influence. Donkeys interrupting lunch, desert climate, sleeping hours and the way you sit.

Dr. Omar W. Nasim, an award-winning historian of science and philosophy from the University of Regensburg, will take us back in time and put the object of doing astronomy into perspective with an alternative method – by analyzing the chairs and the way the astronomers sat in them, Omar will enlighten us on their influence on astronomy and the history of science.

We have all seen an astronomer pictured next to his or her instrument, perhaps posing next to a famous telescope or peering through its eyepiece. But what you might not have noticed is the chair; often in the same depiction, but easily overlooked.

Once you see these chairs you cannot miss them —they tend to be everywhere in the history of astronomy. In this presentation, Omar W. Nasim attempts to unearth the cultural significance of displaying chairs in engravings and photographs for nineteenth-century audiences.

By understanding what the chair and the bodily postures visually communicated, we will also come to understand their function in observing.

After Dr. Omar W. Nasim analysis, Astronomer Nanna Bach-Møller will tell us about her experiences of chasing exoplanets through the giant Danish telescope located on Mount Silla in the deserts of Chile, from where she was blogging about her work. She will enhance our knowledge on how it is to do astronomy when attempting to find out if these planets, circulating other stars, inhabit extraterrestrial life.

Please note that the talk will be held in english.