You are warmly invited to the next McGill Physics & TSI Public Talk, “Digital Skies for Ancient Contexts: Reconstructing Ramesside Star Clocks with Python,” presented by J. Luna Zagorac (Postdoctoral Researcher at the Trottier Space Institute).
The Public Talk will take place on Thursday, December 4th, from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM, in Leacock 26 (855 Sherbrooke Street West), at McGill University.
In this talk, Luna will explore how ancient Egyptian star charts, painted on tomb ceilings over 3,000 years ago, can be understood through modern computational tools. Using decanOpy, a Python-based code developed for this project, she digitally reconstructs the night sky of ca. 1300 BCE to investigate how Ramesside Star Clocks were created and what they reveal about early astronomical practices. The hope is that matching these digital “observations” to the primary sources will help narrow down how these observations were originally performed, which in turn may allow us to link the ancient star names to their modern equivalents.
📅 Date: Thursday, December 4th, 2025
🕖 Time: 7:00 – 8:30 PM
📍 Location: Leacock 26 Room, Leacock Building (855 Sherbrooke St W, Montréal)
As always, the event is free and open to everyone. We hope you will join us for this fascinating intersection of ancient knowledge and modern computation!
