Starmus Festival

The Starmus International Festival is an international gathering focused on celebrating astronomy, space exploration, music, art, and allied sciences such as biology and chemistry. It was founded by Garik Israelian, an astronomer at the Institute for Astrophysics in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.

The Festival has featured Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Alexei Leonov, Jim Lovell, Brian May, Jill Tarter, Kip Thorne, and Rick Wakeman among others.

In 2007, Brian May, founding guitarist of the rock band Queen, completed his PhD dissertation, which was left unfinished in 1974 when Queen began to achieve significant success. May’s work focused on zodiacal dust in the solar system. He had studied at Tenerife earlier through Imperial College in London, and resumed work there more than 30 years later. In 2007, his new advisor was Garik Israelian, and the two struck up a friendship, Israelian also being a musician. This led to the founding of the Starmus Festival — the name paying homage to stars and music — and the stage was set for the first Festival, which would occur four years later.

The festival has occurred in 2011, 2014 and 2016 in Tenerife, Spain. The fourth Starmus festival will be held in Trondheim Norway from June 18th to 23rd 2017 under the title ‘Life And The Universe’ .

The festival is described as an event where "the greatest minds in space exploration, astronomy, cosmology, and planetary science get together for a week of incredible talks, sharing of information, and appreciation of the knowledge we have of space and the universe."

The first Starmus Festival took place June 20–25, 2011, on Tenerife, and La Palma, Canary Islands. The primary site of the event was the Ritz-Carlton Abama Hotel in Tenerife. The theme was “50 Years of Man in Space,” and featured as speakers a blend of astronaut-explorers, astronomers, biologists, chemists, and artists. The Festival presented the rare opportunity for delegates, as the attendees were called, to share time, speak with, share refreshments, and converse with the speakers. Events generally began in the afternoon through the early evening, so that delegates had plenty of time to also enjoy the volcanic beauty of the islands, which featured beaches, geological wonders, and — on La Palma — the largest optical telescope in the world, the 14.2-m Gran Telescopio Canarias, as well as other instruments. About 200 people attended Starmus 1.

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