page_title: Starmus Festival
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Starmus Festival / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The Starmus Festival is a combination of science, art and music that has featured presentations from astronauts, cosmonauts, Nobel Prize winners and other prominent figures from science, culture, the arts and music. ESO is a partner organisation of Starmus. The fifth festival, Starmus V will take place in Bern, Switzerland, from 24–29 June 2019. This picture was taken during the press conference announcing the festival in February 2018.
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: 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 London, and resumed work there more than 30 years later. In 2007, his new co-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.
caption: Starmus V festival announced.[1]
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