LEWISTON — Science journalist Babak Tafreshi will give a talk about exploring the importance of the night sky on Monday, Oct. 22, at Bates College.
Tafreshi is founder of The World At Night (TWANight.org), promoting world peace and environmental stewardship through an exhibition of photographs of the night sky over prominent Earth-bound landmarks.
His “The World At Night” lecture is related to the Bates College Museum of Art’s “Starstruck: The Fine Art of Astrophotography” exhibition.
Tafreshi will also lead a workshop on Oct. 17-20 at West Branch Pond Camps in the Moosehead Lake area. (Cost: $500, call 786-8212 or email aodom@bates.edu)
“The eternally peaceful night sky looks the same above symbols of all nations and regions, attesting to the truly unified nature of Earth as a planet rather than an amalgam of human-designated territories,” Tafreshi said in a prepared statement.
He is one of 37 artists from around the world featured in “Starstruck,” one of the first exhibitions to treat astrophotography as an art form.
Tafreshi has contributed to many television and radio programs on astronomy and has interviewed renowned astronomers and space scientists. He was editor of Iran’s astronomy magazine and is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope Magazine.
Tafreshi’s global contribution to night sky photography earned him science’s most prestigious imaging honor, the Lennart Nilsson Award, in 2009. That same year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the International Astronomical Union designated TWAN as a Special Project of the International Year of Astronomy.
“(Babak’s) long experience with journalism and his passion for photography make him a powerful communicator,” said Anthony Shostak, the museum’s curator of education and the organizer of “Starstruck.”
“His photographs in ‘Starstruck’ are among the most popular with visitors, perhaps because they ground the beauty of the stars with a human environment,” Shostak added.
The Oct. 22 talk will take place at 6 p.m. in room 104 of the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St. A reception will follow in the art museum, also in the arts center. Weather-permitting, a star-viewing party guided by local amateur astronomy clubs will follow the reception.
The public is welcome to all three of the evening’s events free of charge.
The Bates Museum of Art is open free to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday; and until 9 p.m. Wednesday from September through May. For more information, visit bates.edu/museum/.
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- Science journalist Babak Tafreshi will give a lecture, titled “The World At Night,” on Monday, Oct. 22, at Bates College. The talk is related to the Bates College Museum of Art’s exhibition “Starstruck: The Fine Art of Astrophotography.”
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