As part of the International Year of Astronomy, people worldwide will be celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of the telescope to look at the night sky from 22-24 October. We have three great opportunities for you to join in too with Wellington City Libraries and Wellington Astronomical Society – there’s something for everyone: they’re all fun and free, no bookings required.

The Life and Science of Galileo – Thursday 22 October, 7-8pm, Central Library
Find out about Galileo’s contributions to modern science and how he used his ideas to discover the universe with a telescope in this free talk by Ross Powell from the Wellington Astronomical Society.

Best known as a genius of science for his use of the telescope, Galileo also made important discoveries about gravity and motion that laid the foundations for modern astronomy and science. Find out more about the man who was at times surrounded by controversy between science and religion, but did not let that stop his revolutionary ideas from progressing the exploration of our universe (suitable for adults).

Galileo for Kids – Saturday 24 October, 2-4pm, Central Library
Kids can join in the fun too :  find out how to make a simple telescope and try out other fun experiments exploring things such as gravity and pendulums, just like Galileo did. All young astronomers who come along will also get to make their own special Galileo badge to take home (suitable for 5-12 year olds).

Activities and experiments will be provided by the Wellington Astronomical Society and Wellington City Libraries.

Galileo’s Moons – Saturday 24 October, 7.30-11pm, Thomas King Observatory (near Carter Observatory at the top of the Botanical Gardens)
Come along to Thomas King Observatory to join in the celebrations and look through telescopes to see Jupiter and the Moon just like Galileo did 400 years ago* – it’s a fun and free night for all the family!
(*weather permitting – if cloudy or wet other activities will be held inside Thomas King Observatory)

Come along and join us as we continue to explore, wonder and discover in the International Year of Astronomy 2009!

Wellington City Libraries along with IP (Interactive Publications) invite you to the launch of Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, on Monday 19^th October at 5.30 pm ground floor Central Library, Victoria Street. This amazing anthology is edited by poet, fiction writer, critic and publisher Mark Pirie and Tim Jones, poet and fiction writer, both Wellingtonians. There is an impressive number of New Zealand writers represented in this anthology. The readers for the evening include poets Janis Freegard, Nic Hill, Jack Perkins, Rachel McAlpine, Helen Rickerby, Robin Fry and the editors Mark Pirie and Tim Jones.

The seating will be available on a first come first served based.

So come along and join us for a wonderful evening of poetry.

Visit our libraries next week for a series of free workshops for everyone aged over 55.

Workshop topics include  gardening, yoga, estate planning, jewellery care, family history, antiques and more. Interested in writing for teenagers? Come along to a workshop with award-winning author Fleur Beale. Want to get into organic gardening? Come and listen to New Zealand Gardener of the Year, Sister Loyola. There’ll be lots of opportunities to ask questions, and if you’re an antiques enthusiast coming along to our Antiques Show and Tell session with Tinakori Antiques’ John Fyson, you can even bring along your family heirlooms and find out more about them!

Interested? Make sure to check out our Living Well Workshop Programme for a full schedule of speakers and topics.

This weekend you are invited to the launch of a new DVD that Wellington City Libraries have made about Wellington’s Muslim communities.

Our Place, Your Place is directed and produced by Helen Donnelly (a WCL staff member), and gives a brief history of the Muslim community in New Zealand, and of the Wellington Islamic Centre. It also highlights the many relevant resources available in library collections.

The DVD will screen as part of the NZ Diversity Forum in Te Papa’s Oceania Room this Sunday 23 August from 3.30-4.30pm.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion called ‘Muslims in the Media: A True Reflection?’  The panel will include members of Wellington’s Muslim community along with Helen Donnelly and local media experts.

If you’re keen to attend this screening and panel discussion, please register online.

Join us for an evening at Ruth Gotlieb Library in Kilbirnie to learn more about the importance of astronomy in Islam as we celebrate Islam Awareness Week.

There will be a presentation, displays, time for questions and if it is a clear night a chance to look at the night sky through a telescope.

Light refreshments are provided from 6pm and the programme will begin at 6.30pm, Thursday 13 August.

What makes a ‘Great Comet’, and how do the Great Comets of our lifetime compare with the legendary comets of the historical era? Many New Zealanders have had opportunities to marvel at these rare phenomena – including the famous Comet Halley in 1986, and more recently Comet McNaught in January 2007 with its impressive rooster tail.

Come on a journey through time and space with Ian Cooper from Palmerston North Astronomical Society as he compares the Great Comets of our time with those in the past, and witness for yourself these spectacular visions that have heralded the death of kings and other momentous events in human history

When: Wednesday 12 August, 7-8pm

Where: Central Library (Ground Floor), 65 Victoria Street

Kei te whakanuia te Wiki o te Reo Māori e Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui, mā te pakiwaitara reo-rua a te kaikōrero rongonui nei, kaituhi rongonui, kairotarota, kaiako hoki a Moira Wairama.

Ka hāngai tēnei kaupapa kore utu ki te wā pakiwaitara kōhungahunga o ia wiki, ā, he paku waiata hoki.

11.45am-12.15pm
Rāhoroi, 1 o Akuhata
Whare Pukapuka, 65 Tiriti o Wikitōria
Nau mai haere mai.

Wellington City Libraries is celebrating te Wiki o te Reo Māori with a special bi-lingual story time by Moira Wairama a well known storyteller, award winning writer, poet and teacher.

This free session follows the regular pre-school story time and includes some simple waiata.

Ninety people or so piled in through the door to attend a New Zealand-themed ukulele story-time recently during NZ Music Month.  Marg, Odette, Ellie and Monty performed, read and improvised their way through 30 minutes of great fun!

Reviews from Craig, one of our librarians:

Stainless, Sticky Filth
Sticky Filth is a Kiwi institution. From the punk rock capital of New Zealand, the mighty New Plymouth no less, they’ve built a fearsome reputation, not for their sound obviously, which isn’t particularly unique, but more for their legacy of utterly furious gigs. They’re a punk/speed metal hybrid, completely old-skool and refreshingly uncomplicated; don’t go looking for a hint of ironic sophistication or hip self-awareness, there is none to be found (and they have a front-man called Craig, which is always nice). If your appreciative of rawness and simplicity then you’ll be in grimy rock heaven because Stainless is a non-stop romp through rock’s greatest clichés; drugs, girls and in one case a girl and World War Two German handgun, of course, why not eh. Its unrefined, unpolished and just plain dumb (and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible). Highly recommended to anyone looking for something to simply blast. They’re awesome, mate.

Solace, Cale:Drew, Subsets of sets, all by Jakob
Jakob are the best New Zealand band you’ve never heard of. In just three releases these unassuming chaps from the Hawkes Bay have built an international reputation that has seen them grace the stage with celebrated post-rock artists such Isis and Pelican, reap critical acclaim from the uber-trendy rock quarters and have their records released on tre’-chic European labels. Their sound is fundamentally instrumental; progressive sweeps of guitar build upon layers of overdubs until it’s all shattered by titanic shifts in tone and crushing breakdowns. I suppose they transcend categorization in many regards, post-rock, instru-metal, experimental? Any one could fit. Its Pink Floyd listening in as King Crimson plays Tool (minus the vocal), maybe, possibly? Anyway, best you listen for yourself. Its gentle intricate picking one minute, dense and heavy riffage the next, you’re sure to find something you’ll love. Every album is as equally fantastic as the others; now that’s something you don’t hear too often. Check them out, please!

Aileron, Rotor+
Rotor+ don’t simply play electronica, they build epic landscapes out of its tweaks and twitches. It’s like this, picture yourself aboard a magic carpet, go on, dare ya. Now envision yourself hanging onto the lip of that carpet as it speeds along hugging the contours of Aotearoa; that’s Rotor+ right there. Listening to Aileron is like participating in a long and constantly unfolding journey, in three tracks we’re whisked along through ambient and ill-bient landscapes, not unlike those traversed by early 70’s electronic experimentalists. It’s certainly surprising every time I listen, there’s something new to be heard and always something fresh and invigorating to be imagined.

Sedition, Dawn of Azazel
Lead by a sworn New Zealand police officer Dawn of Azazel are a death metal band that has mainly drawn media attention because of their lead singers chosen profession. This is a little unfair, I say a little because going by the booklet photos they sort of look like they can handle it. They are also a pretty good old-skool thrash band. Lets be honest, they’ve got little appeal for non-metal heads, actually there’s no way I could recommend this to anyone but a hardened death metal fan, but there’s something truly majestic about the lo-fi hiss and overly trebled cacophony they manage to assemble. It’s true, it’s unvarnished and it’s all frightfully earnest, you can’t ask for more than that in your metal, so on that factor alone I’d say pitch in.

Tiny Blue Biosphere, Rhian Sheehan
Alongside Pitch Black, Rhian Sheehan is another artist who has taped into the core of what makes a great Kiwi electronic artist. There’s no doubt that at its spiritual nucleus Rhian is producing music that couldn’t have been made anywhere else but it is still resoundingly international in its expression. We’ve flung our electronic artists across the globe so it’s nice to hear an album recorded here with such a global theme. At its foundation Biosphere is an ecological album, a celebration of Gaia and our treatment of her. It’s not cynical, while it could have easily been so; it is instead a celebration of us and our surroundings, the perfect Sunday morning album to reflect on or the perfect Saturday night album to bond over.

Poison of Ages, 8 Foot Sativa
Now this is how to record a great Kiwi metal album. Firstly, leave home and head to Sweden’s Studio Underground, worked for Blindspott and has done similar wonders for 8 Foot. I don’t know what it was about the location change but it meant 8 Foot went from being a ‘meeh’ generic metal band to a truly great blackened death metal band, all in a the space of a couple of albums. Infinitely heavier and darker, and with thicker and denser production values than say Dawn of Azazel, 8 Foot have been treading the boards for a decade now and showing no signs of taming themselves. If anything they are getting heavier and more controversial. Poison of Ages is the best place to start, everything previous to this is tamer so you can happily work your way down the albums if you’re after some lighter relief.

There my dear, Dimmer
Shane Carter, blah, blah, blah. We know all about Shane’s iconic, and of course, well deserved status in the annuals of Kiwi rock, but I wonder if that legacy sometimes obscures just how good he really is. We expect greatness, so when it arrives we’re all a bit ho-hum about it. Well, I’m not ho-hum in the least about this album; it’s one of my all time favourites, occupying a very special place in my heart, tucked up right next to a couple of Marvin Gayes’, a Miles Davis, a Bon Iver and one Coldplay song (forgive me). It’s a heartbreak album, wonderfully morbid and melancholic; it’s a right gloomy tour de force. Shane welcomed back the guitar on this album, after a couple of more keyboard orientated excursions, and it’s as beautiful as any of his previous standout works. If you’ve not heard Dimmer before begin here, it’s immaculately dreary.

Metamathics, HDU
It is utterly ridiculous that HDU never made it to the top of the Billboard charts. Here’s another Kiwi band, heaped with international praise, and still playing tiny gigs in sweaty pubs around NZ. Doesn’t make any sense at all. They’re a sterling, lurching, beast of a guitar band. Huge chunky, ominous riffs wrapped around twirling and nebulous harmonies. I don’t know what it is about our land but HDU pull something dark, mysterious and somehow kind of tranquil from our soil. They’re timeless and epic, there’s a sweeping gothic, very Dunedin, quality to their sound, infused with some of that Southern chill perhaps. In any case they’ve obviously spent a great deal of time sitting in cold rooms creating these tracks, there’s a care and passion to them that makes one imagine they really inhabit those notes when they strike them.

Did you know you can watch 100 classic New Zealand music video clips on the Film Archive’s website? The project is called Ready to Roll and clips are organised by title, author, year, label or director. The oldest clips available are from 1967; the most recent are from 2008.

During New Zealand Music Month in May people on the site have also been voting for their favourite clips. Voting unfortunately closed at the weekend so you can no longer register your vote – but you can see NZ’s top 10 music video clips as voted on at the Film Archive. Have a look!

The Film Archive collects, protects and projects New Zealand’s film and television history, and their website is worth a look – they have some quite incredible content. Just as one example, you can view New Zealand’s earliest surviving piece of film, of soldiers departing for the Boer War in 1900. Wow.