"How Not To Be Afraid Of The Dark" with Prof. Jocelyn Bell Burnell

"Don’t forget that with astronomy and gardening you never come to the end of anything"

June has inherited her great-aunt's notes on the secret joys of night-time gardening. She's keen to give it a try. But the shrubbery is a forbidding place in the dark, the sky is full of clouds and a ghostly group of women astronomers seems to have taken up residence in the potting shed...

How Not To Be Afraid Of The Dark is a work for performance commissioned by Ledbury Poetry Festival and the Royal Astronomical Society in celebration of International Year of Astronomy. Further performances have been made possible by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

The 40 min play is performed by Christine Watkins and Erica Grant, with an accompanying 40 min talk on poetry and astronomy by internationally-renowned astrophysicist Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell, and will include readings from the new anthology of astronomy poems, Dark Matter, accompanied by breathtaking planetarium visuals on the dome.