News

  • Costellazione Manga is back with a Sailor Moon special!

    In our latest event, the Sailor warriors guided us through the most recent news on the Solar system. Celebrating 25 years since the first Italian edition of Sailor Moon, this year also marks the ninth year of Costellazione Manga.

    The event was an online seminar; speaker: Daria Dall'Olio.

    Volantino del seminario Costellazione Manga - Speciale Sailor Moon Copertina del seminario Costellazione Manga - Speciale Sailor Moon
  • The CAP Journal published our paper on Costellazione Manga

    It's now available online the issue 24 of the CAP Journal - Communicating Astronomy with the Public, including the paper Costellazione Manga: Explaining Astronomy Using Japanese Comics and Animation by Daria Dall'Olio and Piero Ranalli. For better reading and for printing, a high-resolution PDF of the issue is available. We thank the editor, Sze-leung Cheung, and an anonymous referee whose comments helped to improve the presentation of our paper.

    CAP Journal, cover of issue 24 CAP Journal, article on Costellazione Manga
  • Costellazione Manga at Lucca Comics and Games 2018!

    An enthusiast public has partecipated to our workshop on Costellazione Manga and the communication of science, held at the Lucca Comics and Games convention. The participants appreciated our method, and the interactive sessions sparked several ideas future work and collaborations. We thank all the people who participated! Thanks to la Repubblica, the online newspapers, Lo Spazio Bianco and media INAF for covering our event. We acknowledge support from INAF - Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory through the Genesis-SKA project, and we thank our collaborators from INAF for their help in the workshop organisation. We thank the AnimeClick.it team who helped in making our project known and that we could finally meet in person in Lucca!

    Photos: Daria Dall'Olio e Piero Ranalli, with their collaborators Alessandra Zanazzi (INAF-Arcetri), Caterina Boccato (INAF-Padova) and Claudio Codella (INAF-Arcetri).

    la Repubblica, articolo su Costellazione Manga la Repubblica, articolo su Costellazione Manga la Repubblica, articolo su Costellazione Manga

    Photos: some ideas proposed by the participants. Click to enlarge.

    Photo: Daria Dall'Olio with the AnimeClick.it team.

  • Double success for Costellazione Manga at the Notte D'Oro festival in Ravenna

    The event "Sotto il cielo del Drago d'Oro: omaggio a Goldrake per i suoi 40 anni in Italia", celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first broadcasting of UFO Robot Grendizer in Italy, was so successful that the Planetarium of Ravenna was full - twice. Both Daria Dall'Olio's planetarium show "Costellazione Manga Speciale Goldrake" and Gabriele Scardovi's seminar "Puoi fuggire da Vega, ma non dai tuoi mostri. Combatti per la Terra, Duke Fleed!" were given twice during the evening. Special guests of the evening were the Japanese deputy consul Mr. Tominaga, who came from the consulate in Milan, the prize-winner cosplayer Piero Magoga with his Duke Fleed costume, and artist Pietro Bassani with the digital paintings from his series "Relinquere nuces".

    We thank the Planetarium of Ravenna the ARAR association for hosting us one more time!

     
     

    Photos by Paolo Morini, Amalia Persico, Paolo Alfieri and Angela Dalla.

  • Interview to Costellazione Manga's authors on Animeclick.it

    Animeclick.it, the most important Italian portal on anime and manga, just published an interview to Daria Dall'Olio and Piero Ranalli about Costellazione Manga and its plan for the future. You can read it here (in Italian).

    Animeclick.it, 5 ottobre 2018
  • Costellazione Manga at Lucca Comics and Games!

    PLEASE NOTE: the workhop on Nov. 3 will be held in Italian, not in English.

    Daria Dall'Olio e Piero Ranalli insieme a Capitan Harlock

    After the success in Japan and the appreciation by the International astronomical union (IAU), Costellazione Manga is getting ready to a new important step: we will be at Lucca Comics and Games, the most important comic and gaming convention in Europe. We will present a 2 hour workshop in English in Italian where we will show the "backstage" of our project. Starting from a review of pedagogy studies, we will show how to build one of our shows, how to choose the material and how to tune it to the public expectations. Finally we will show how it works in practice, with an example session dedicated to the works of Leiji Matsumoto. The workshop will be open to journalists, science communicators, teachers, museum operators, amateur astronomers and students; an application including a CV is needed. (There will also be another workshop in Italian).

  • A wall painting to celebrate 40 years of Grendizer in Italy

    A wall painting made during last summer celebrates 40 years since the first broadcasting in Italy of UFO Robot Grendizer (localised as Goldrake). It was the first anime to be shown in Italian TV, and the first of a long series of popular Japanese series to be broadcasted. The painting is on the rear wall of Cinema Arena del Sole, in Lido di Classe, Ravenna. (Click on the image to enlarge).

    Wall painting for 40 years of Grendizer in Italy
  • Costellazione Manga will be at the Notte d'Oro in Ravenna

    Costellazione Manga will have a special event during the Notte d'Oro festival in Ravenna, on 6 October 2018. We will present the planetarium show "Sotto il cielo del Drago d'Oro: omaggio a Goldrake per i suoi 40 anni in Italia", dedicated to UFO Robot Grendizer and to its 40 years since it was first broadcasted in Italy.
    More information in our press release (in Italian).

  • Great success for Costellazione Manga in Arcetri

    Costellazione Manga held the closing event of Notti d'estate ad Arcetri (summer nights in Arcetri) on 4 September 2018, in the majestic site of "Teatro delle stelle" (star theatre) on the Arcetri hill near Florence. Famous for being Galileo's residence, Arcetri now hosts the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory of the National institute for astrophysics (INAF). Daria Dall'Olio, PhD student at Chalmers University of Technology, together with Claudio Codella, researcher at INAF-Arcetri and with the support di Piero Ranalli, led more than 150 participants to the discovery of the planets of the Solar systems, of the robotic probes that are exploring them, of stars and nebulae.

    Daria in the Star Theatre in Arcetri Daria and the public during  the Costellazione Manga event Daria during the event
  • Costellazione Manga on the AnimeNewsNetwork and on manga-related sites from around the world

  • Costellazione Manga featured on the Ravenna newspapers

    An English version of the press-release text can be found on this article on the AleMontosi blog.
  • Vetenskapsfestivalen 21 April 2018

    Costellazione Manga al Vetenskapsfestivalen di GöteborgCostellazione Manga al Vetenskapsfestivalen di GöteborgCostellazione Manga al Vetenskapsfestivalen di Göteborg

    Costellazione Manga had an event at the science festival in Gothenburg, Sweden! On the 21 April 2018 the Vetenskapsfestivalen hosted a duet between Daria Dall'Olio and Yvette Gustafsson, the cartoonist who writes the comic stripe "Infosfären" for the Swedish astronomical outreach magazine Populär Astronomi. They talked about planets, stars, cosmic distances and life in the universe, taking inspiration from the anime and manga that are most famous in Sweden (Starzinger and Sailor Moon above all).

    The location was the beautifully decorated Cafè Sirius within SF Bokhandeln, the largest bookstore in Gothenburg that specialises in science fiction, fantasy, comics and board games. The public, who completely filled the venue, had an enthusiastic appreciation for Costellazione Manga!

  • CAP meeting 23-28 March 2018

    Daria Dall'Olio at the conference Communicating Astronomy with the Public Daria Dall'Olio at the conference Communicating Astronomy with the Public Daria Dall'Olio al congresso Communicating Astronomy with the Public

    At right forty years since the first broadcasts in Japan of Starzinger and Galaxy Express 999, and also at forty years since the arrival of Ufo Robot Grendizer in Europe, Costellazione Manga has been warmly welcomed in Japan. Daria Dall'Olio presented the Costellazione Manga project at the most important international conference on astronomy outreach, Communicating Astronomy with the Public 2018, organized by the International Astronomical Union. The conference was held in Fukuoka from 23 to 28 April. A number of 455 people participated, including researchers, communicators, teachers and journalists. Daria's talk was among the 29 chosen for the plenary session, out of more than 300 talks presented in the less attended parallel sessions. Costellazione Manga has been highlighted in the IAU newsletter as one of the three most representative moments at the conference.

    Communicating Astronomy with the Public (CAP) is a series of conferences organised by the IAU to encourage the exchange of ideas and best practices in astronomy outreach. Among its aims there are the new challenges in communicating astronomy in the social media age, and the development of new techniques to involve people with disabilities. The CAP meetings try to empower outreach operators by connecting them to a world network of professionals.

    Daria's participation was supported by the Swedish foundations Chalmersska Forskningsfonden and Åforsk, and by two contributions by the Planetarium of Ravenna and the Solaris cultural association of Ravenna.

    Update: the conference proceedings have been published; read our contribution here.

  • Paper submitted

    The experience gathered in seven years of Costellazione Manga was described in a paper submitted to the CAP Journal - Communicating Astronomy with the Public published by the International Astronomical Union.

    Update: the paper has been published on issue 24 of the CAP Journal.