AoT Leiden: From Ancient Celts to Modern Astronomy! (Leiden, in English)

This month we celebrate the 5th anniversary of Astronomy on Tap Leiden! Join us for a night of celebrations with two fantastic talks from Riccardo Nanni and Jos de Bruijne who will tell us how the study of the stars has evolved from ancient Celts to modern astronomy. As always, there will also be fun games where you could win cool science prizes! The event will take place on Monday 28 March at Grand Café de Burcht (Burgsteeg 14, 2312 JS Leiden) at 20:00 CEST.

Riccardo Nanni: When the sky falls on the head: astronomical knowledge of the ancient Celts
Riccardo Nanni is a postdoc at Leiden Observatory. He loves hunting for primordial distant quasars and super massive black holes, using machine learning techniques and big telescopes, as he aims at understanding how the Universe was a few millions of years after the Big Bang. He wants to find the most distant quasar ever discovered, but life is not always as expected, and he needed to adapt: by living like his ancestors and hunting for real food to survive. In fact, in his talk, he will discuss the ancient astronomical knowledge of the old Celtic tribes, illustrating the importance of the study of the night sky for the survival of the old villages and societies.

Jos de Bruijne: 3D mapping of the Milky Way with Gaia
Jos de Bruijne is a staff astronomer at the European Space Agency. He has been working on the Gaia mission since 2002. The core product of the Gaia mission is its 3D catalogue of nearly 2 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. In his talk, Jos will present the measurement principle of Gaia. He will explain how simply watching the sky for a few years reveals direct information on the distances to stars.

Logistical information
We start at 20:00 sharp, so please arrive earlier to enter the bar, save a seat, and grab a drink. We are not planning to stream the event live, but will be uploading a recording of the talks on our YouTube channel after the event. Register at https://aotleiden.eventbrite.nl/