Moderation: Vânia Maia

What is common to all people on Earth, is the sky. The regularity of the apparent movements of the Sun, Moon and stars, with their cycles, gave rise to the construction of world views or cosmologies; different in each culture, but with common features at times. A set of relationships with the celestial landscape was born in the cradle of cultures, of which curiosity seems to have been the most perennial.

From ancient societies that left us no written records, but marked the landscape with enigmatic constructions aligned with celestial phenomena, to the current interest in the night sky and its phenomena as vehicles for mutual understanding between people, peace, and human development, which has been the role of astronomy throughout time?

Fábio Silva, researcher of archaeoastronomy at the University of Bournemouth, in the United Kingdom, and Luís Tirapicos, historian of sciences at the Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa  (Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon), will present this area of knowledge that seeks to know the many meanings it’s had, over time, the expression “understanding the Universe, and our place in it”.