Starmus VI rocks Armenia

The ace guitarist Bumblefoot Thal of the Sons of Apollo scorches a solo in front of an admiring Brian May during a Starmus concert night.

This year Starmus celebrated its first star party at Garni Temple, outside of Yerevan, a 1,900-year-old Greco-Roman structure that was a superlative backdrop for solar system and deep-sky observing.

Graham Gouldman of 10cc and Brian May knock out several tunes together, supported by an all-star backing band, including their new song “Floating in Heaven.” 

At the outset of Starmus, Board President David Eicher held a press conference to foreshadow the meeting, assisted by astronaut Garrett Reisman, Nobel Prize laureates Emmanuelle Charpentier and Michel Mayor, and multitalented scientist Chris Rapley.

The Starmus speakers gathered for a collective portrait following the main concert night.

An emotional concert moment arrived for many when the Children’s Choir of the Archdiocese of Tavish, Armenia, sang a medley of Queen songs. They were synched with a video of Freddie Mercury looming over them, and when all belted out “We Are the Champions,” it melted the audience.

Garik Israelian, Starmus Director and Co-founder, opens the Festival with a description of all the amazing events to come.

Planetary scientist David Grinspoon is one of the world’s leading experts on Venus, and here he entertained the audience with a look at climate change on Earth, Mars, and Venus.

This was our view as several Starmus Board members testified before the Armenian Parliament, describing the Festival and how it was set, as it was largely funded by the Armenian government.

The History Museum of Armenia shows the stylish architecture of the central area of Yerevan, combining classical looks with a modern city.

A Starmus Board member and technical genius, Tony Fadell gets the crowd excited on the first night, previewing the action to come. Fadell is the inventor of the iPod and the co-inventor of the iPhone.

Rick Wakeman, the greatest keyboard player in the history of rock, legendary from his days with Yes, opens the concert festivities and entertains the Starmus crowd of 5,000.

Always popular, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is one of the nicest guys in the world and wows the crowd by singing his rendition of “Space Oddity.”

Starmus Board member and Nobel Prize winner Emmanuelle Charpentier, celebrated for her gene therapy work with CRISPR technology, describes where genetics will be going in future times.

One of the world’s leading experts on artificial intelligence, Bernhard Schölkopf describes the differences between our perception and the realities of what is coming in the world of AI.

London-based science comedian and illusionist David Zambuka provides a great highlight of levity in his comic routine, “Are You a Martian?”

Starmus Board member and Queen founding guitarist Brian May warms up the Red Special during a pre-concert soundcheck.

Stanford physicist and former director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, Scott Hubbard is an experienced and talented planetary researcher, and described the present and coming eras of Mars exploration.

Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist Michel Mayor, a Swiss researcher, is celebrated for discovering the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sunlike star. Here he describes the state of the union in exoplanet studies.

Clever, witty, and unpredictable, Lisa Kaltenegger is Director of the Carl Sagan Center at Cornell University and delivered a superb lecture on alien Earths.

At a late-night, post-concert dinner, Brian May chats with Apollo royalty, Charlie Duke and his wife Dottie, who had fun recounting Charlie’s Apollo 16 experiences.

The world’s leading expert on black holes, Kip Thorne, describes these weird entities and their warping of space, assisted by his artist and project partner Lia Halloran.

A good friend to Starmus and leading expert on impacts, Mark Boslough of Sandia National Labs describes the great collisions Earth has experienced past and present, and what may come in the future.

The legendary Jane Goodall accepts her Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication in a video that was so thoughtful it brought many in the audience to tears.

Among the excursions we took during Starmus was a journey to Erebuni Fortress, a mountaintop stronghold at Yerevan founded in 782 BC.

The local organizers of Starmus in Yerevan surprised Astronomy Magazine Editor David Eicher on the 40th anniversary of his employment at the magazine, offering a cake and a bottle of gin called “Astronomer.”