Space – from the sacred places of Bulgaria to the achievements of Bulgarian scientists

The National Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences presents its new exhibition "Starry Sky – Mythology and Science", which covers knowledge of Space from antiquity to the present day and examines mythology, ancient beliefs and the deep knowledge of the celestial bodies of Bulgarian medieval writers, in order to reach the innovations of modern Bulgarian scientists, who are little known to the general audience, but contribute to the development of astronomy on a global scale even today.

The installation will be available to visitors until May 2027 and is a large-scale study presented by an interdisciplinary team, which, with the help of high technology, immerses the viewer in a rich sensory experience.

"A professor who deals with space technologies, looked at the exhibition for about 5 hours, and a 25-year-old software specialist exclaimed: "Bravo for your work! These are the kinds of things I want to see in Bulgarian museums," says Senior Assistant Professor Dr. Iliya Valev from the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The exhibition itself is divided into three parts - on this occasion the scientist explains:

"The first one examines the history of astronomical knowledge in Bulgaria's latitudes. The section "Ancient Observatories" presents the knowledge of the starry sky of ancient people; it continues with the first written sources; traditional practices for measuring time and navigation; the idea of celestial bodies in the three main religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam and their relationship to the starry sky. It ends with the beginning of the actual astronomical education, the development of astronomy in Bulgaria, the scientific discoveries of Bulgarian scientists, the flights into space of Bulgarian astronauts, the sending into space of the song "Izlel e Delyu haidutin" performed by Valya Balkanska and the many modern Bulgarian devices that are in orbit.

The second part examines all the objects in the starry sky, interesting phenomena, and how our ancestors explained them. Comets, meteors, planets, and deep space are presented. The third part is an improvised planetarium – a star hall, in which a film, specially mounted for the exhibition, is projected, which makes a retrospective of terrestrial amateur astronomical observations, through professional telescopes, in order to finally reach space flights beyond the Earth's gravity."

Ilia Valev is convinced that the exhibits from the ethnographic fund, such as jewelry and everyday objects, related to images of the magical will be extremely interesting to visitors, because in addition to being beautiful and curious, each of them has its own story, related to images of celestial objects.

In the exhibition, you can also see the device with which the dwarf planet Pluto was discovered, the spacesuit of the first Bulgarian cosmonaut, listen to the golden discs, directly from the NASA website, see the first space greenhouse in the world – the work of Bulgarian scientists, understand that Bulgaria is in third place on the globe in the production of space food and observe the images of celestial bodies as if through a porthole on a spacecraft.

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According to Dr. Valev, however, it is also nice to see a unique device – the first planetarium in Bulgaria constructed back in 1962 in Dimitrovgrad. Dr. Valev continues:

"I would draw attention to the model of the newly built first radio telescope for Bulgaria, which will soon be located next to the observatory in Rozhen. We have interesting devices, such as a tellurion and an orrery, which show the movement of the planets around the Sun or demonstrate in a very interesting way the movement of the Moon relative to the Earth and of the Earth with the Moon relative to the Sun – they very well visualize how lunar and solar eclipses occur. The Bulgarian National Radio provided us with the voice of Elisaveta Bagryana, who is one of the few famous people who have seen Halley's Comet twice in their lives. She dedicated three of her poems to this comet, which were recorded by the Golden Fund of the Bulgarian National Radio and can now be listened to by our visitors here," says Dr. Valev.

And the exhibition, like most of the museum's projects, has been translated into English to be accessible to foreign tourists, who make up half of the visitors.

The researcher emphasizes that even in the Middle Ages, the enlightened Bulgarian writers knew a lot about the Cosmos and celestial bodies - about their shape and movement. Evidence of this is a number of texts from that time. Some of them from the 9th - 10th centuries - "Shestodnev" by John the Exarch and "Simeon's Collection" - are also present in the exhibition. In the coming months, the exhibition of the National Ethnographic Museum will also provide additional information to visitors:

"We tried to make the exhibition so that it would affect as many senses as possible. We used a play with lights, we selected special colors so that they could evoke an idea of outer space. The same goes for the sounds that are woven through our media. Our museum is in the center of Sofia and in practice our visitors are 50% Bulgarians and 50% foreigners. For this reason, the exhibition has also been translated into English so that every visitor can understand the topic".

The exhibition was developed jointly with the Institute of Astronomy, the Institute of Space Research, the Department of Astronomy of Sofia University, the National Polytechnic Museum, the National Museum of Education, the Giordano Bruno National Astronomical Observatory, Dimitrovgrad and the Astronomical Observatory in Haskovo.

"We plan to organize separate educational programs and open lectures for any audience - schoolchildren, university students and adults", says Dr. Ilia Valev.