Florence, 19 June 2024 – Il June continues to reserve many shows in the sky. After the ‘cosmic kiss’ between the Moon and the star Spica, now is the time for falling stars. As early as June 16th, three of them began to cross the sky meteor showers: the June Lyrids, the Theta Ophiuchids and Xi Draconids. Then, on 17 June, it was the turn of the maximum visibility of the Gamma-Draconids and the Aquilids. THE five consecutive days of what is a very rare celestial event come to an end this night, when they will plow through the darkness with their luminous trails Sagittarides. So keep your eyes peeled, and it’s a good idea to be ready to make a wish. The best time to admire them is after midnight, from 00.30 to 2 am.
For those who miss them, don’t worry: other shooting stars will light up the June sky, to the delight of adults and children. On June 27th it will be the turn of the Bootids, on the 28th of the Rho Sagittarides and finally on June 29th of the Tau Aquarids. Let them be desires of love, luck, or success, this month therefore offers many opportunities to express them and hope they come true. In any case, they are an opportunity not to be missed, the possibility of admiring the beauty of the night sky, preferably in a place far from the light of inhabited centres.
In Tuscany there are many astronomical observatories, which often organize evenings open to the public and guided observations. The best known are the Astronomical Observatory of the Pistoiese Mountains in San Marcello Piteglio, the Chianti Multifunctional Observatory of Barberino Tavarnelle, some in Valdera-Valdicecina (the Astronomical Center of Lajatico, that of Libbiano a Peccioli, that of Volterra), that of Roselle in Grosseto and obviously the most famous of all, the Inaf observatory of Arcetri in Florence, which presents many initiatives until July 18th.
Born today Salman Rushdie born on 19 June 1947 in Bombay. The Anglo-Indian writer was savagely stabbed on August 12, 2022 in Chautauqua, a community for artists in New York state. After the attack in which he nearly died, and which cost him the loss of sight in his right eye, he wrote the memoir ‘Knife’. “Writing this book was a necessity for me: a way of appropriating the narrative of what happened and of responding to violence with art”, the writer commented at the time of the publishing house’s announcement. The ambush overlapped with a life spent for years under the threat of the fatwa (and a $2.5 million bounty on his head) decreed in 1989. For almost a decade Rushdie had lived in hiding, an experience faced in a previous memoir, Joseph Anton, published in 2012 with the pseudonym adopted in that period of fear in homage to the writers Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. The fatwa was revoked in 1998 and since then Rushdie had once again become an active member of the New York literary community, at the forefront of the movement for freedom of expression. He has written: “I am the sum of everything that happened before me, of everything that I was seen doing, of everything that was done to me.”
