Dante and Astronomy
13 September 2020
Podcast Meeting

The fame of Dante is international, as the Poet was at his own times. Rememberings of his passage at the University of Paris are still visible.
His pilgrimages, for political and professional reasons, are framed in the verses of the Divine Comedy.
His poetry has been able to include all cultural, artistic, theological and religious aspects of his times, as well as scientific.
To Dante and Astronomy is expressely dedicated the podcast meeting to be inaugurated on September 13, 2020.
It will start the seventh centennial celebrations of the death of Dante, occurred in Ravenna on the nigth of Sept. 13-14, 1321.
Dante is an icon of the medieval culture, where science and faith were deeply united.

e nove Muse mi dimostran l'Orse
(Par. II, 9)

is the verse chosen for the title of the event: nine muses, all arts, contribute to show the Ursae, to maintain the North, the correct direction, in the extraordinary trip that Dante (not Aeneas, a classical hero, nor St. Paul, the Apostole...as he wrote) was able to perform.
But not only a figurative North, an ideal Compass in the hard sea of human life... Dante shows several pictures of genuine observations of physical phenomena, and the awe of astronomical events as himself indeed experienced.
Astronomy as codified language, astronomical observations filled by nostalgic sensations, astronomical bodies as silent testimonies of the phases of the human life, before and after the passage into the Other World, of which Dante is the cantor par excellence.

Contributions of scientistis and dantists will be included in this meeting dedicated especially to the young students, and to all estimators of Dante The hosting institution is the ICRANet, International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics Network in Pescara with the participation of the Astrophysical Observatory of Asiago, and the Academy of Lincei The patrocinium to the IAU Commission III of History of Astronomy has been requested.

Rome, 31 August 2020

Costantino Sigismondi
(Chair)