The Burunh Program
Upcoming Events
Join us for a special stargazing event and connect with the cosmos through the beauty of night. Kamilaroi astrophysicist Krystal De Napoli and Associate Professor Duane Hamacher will guide audiences on a journey through space and time, exploring the significance of the moon, stars and Sky Country in First Nations knowledge systems. The evening will begin with a welcome and light refreshments, followed by a Sky Country presentation and telescope viewing under the night sky. This event marks the first major public program of The Burunh Program for Cultural & Indigenous Astronomy.
Thursday, 18 June 2026, 6.30-9.30pm, Waverley Valley Scout Hall, Valley Reserve, 1B Wills Ave, Mount Waverley. Ticketed Event. $12 pp.
Head to Yarraville Library after hours for an insightful talk by Duane Hamacher, Associate Professor of Astrophysics and Director of The Burunh Program for Cultural & Indigenous Astronomy in the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne. Duane's work examines humanity's connection to the stars and our presence in space in terms of science, history, culture, and society, with a focus on Australian Indigenous Astronomy. He published 60+ papers and chapters, as well as the best-selling book The First Astronomers: how Indigenous Elders read the stars (Allen & Unwin, 2022) with six Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders.
Tuesday, 16 June 2026, 6:00 - 8:00 PM, Yarraville Library. Free.
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Upcoming UMSU Seminar: Did Galileo discover Neptune?
On Monday, 25 May 2026, the University of Melbourne Physics Students’ Society is hosting a seminar by physics Professor David Jamieson on his research about Galileo and the discovery of Neptune. Most say that the planet Neptune was discovered in the mid-1 800s... but was it? Join Prof Jamieson on his quest to uncover the truth on his trip to Florence to personally examine Galileo's original notebooks. Free pizza supplied!
12:00-1:00 pm, Geoff Opat Seminar Room (Level 6), David Caro (Physics), University of Melbourne
Seminar: Samoan Astronomy and... a Supernova?
On Monday, 4 May 2026 Burunh Director, A/Prof Duane Hamacher, delivered an astro-semninar for the School of Physics, where he discussed new research examining a potential account of a supernova or cataclysmic transient event recorded in Samoan astronomy in 1840. He took the group through the process of conducting interdisciplinary research and expanded on how we can merge qualitative and quantitative approaches in the sciences and humanities to tackle research questions.
Upcoming Seminar: The Cosmos in a Box - Materiality and the Antikythera Mechanism
In this HPS Seminar, Dr Tatiana Bur, from ANU, Will analyse the Antikythera mechanism from a material perspective. Pulled out of the ocean in 1901 by sponge divers, this object has an intriguing historiography: almost tossed back into the ocean, a source of epigraphic fascination, hidden in museum storerooms, the topic of a paper in Nature, and widely hailed as ‘the world’s first computer’. This seminar will explore insights into how the object’s visual and material features including the inscriptions, visual arrangement of information, and the human-object interactions formed and informed the function of the object as a scientific model working as a concept of the ‘middle’ between astronomical theory, mechanical model, and representation of the natural world. Monday, 16 March, 1–2 pm, The Digital Lab, Room 213-215, Level 2, Arts West
To join via Zoom: https://unimelb.zoom.us/j/85707355935?pwd=WuCfDiQ21IwvtVDKbCabdAMI3HUD4v.1
Public Talk: Aboriginal observations of variable stars
Wednesday, 11 February from 20:00–22:30 at Mueller Hall (Melbourne Observatory). During this free public talk, sponsored by the Astronomical Society of Victoria, A/Prof Duane Hamacher will speak about how Aboriginal Australians have kept detailed oral records of variable stars and assigned them meaning. In this talk, Duane will detail the process of conducting this research, showcasing the methods and challenges of analysing information that comes from both scientific and cultural perspectives.
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/live/jqbiLRWma7Y?si=4hb8IvljLFZZ65Zv