Come and help cel­e­brate the 50th anniver­sary of the Moon Land­ing with the incred­i­ble Moon-themed line-up at Blue­dot festival.

It was 50 years to the day – 21 July 1969 – that Neil Arm­strong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon. Where bet­ter to be than at the icon­ic Jodrell Bank in Cheshire – which played a unique role in track­ing the Eagle Lan­der onto the surface.

Dr Helen Shar­man, the UK’s first astro­naut and the first woman on the Mir Space Sta­tion will give one of the fes­ti­val’s Dot Talks – as will James Burke, BBC anchor for live cov­er­age of the Apol­lo 11 Moon land­ing in 1969. Through­out the week­end Blue­dot will relive the Apol­lo 11 mis­sion in real time with The Moon Land­ing LIVE using archive audio and video. Fes­ti­val goers will be able to fol­low along includ­ing all the key moments of enter­ing lunar orbit, the Eagle land­ing on the Moon and Armstrong’s one small step.

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Asso­ciate Direc­tor of Jodrell Bank Cen­tre for Astro­physics Pro­fes­sor Tim O’Brien will present One Giant Leap: Jodrell Bank and the Race to the Moon, fea­tur­ing fas­ci­nat­ing audio-visu­al mate­r­i­al from Jodrell Bank’s archive.

The Lovell Tele­scope. will be utilised as part of a unique project. Using audio ‘loops’ cre­at­ed between mis­sion con­trol and the lunar mod­ule, fused with sig­nals and record­ings gen­er­at­ed by Jodrell Bank as it tracked the moon land­ings, cel­e­brat­ed light artists Illu­mi­nos will trans­form the Lovell Tele­scope with Lunar Loops Tele­scope Pro­jec­tion.  Com­bin­ing graph­ics and audio, visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions of these audio feeds will be made to chat­ter, rise and fall across the epic can­vas of the dish cul­mi­nat­ing in a real-time video map­ping of the first step onto the Moon at 3.56am, 21 July – 50 years to the minute from when Earth was first seen from the lunar surface.

Espe­cial­ly for the fes­ti­val you can dis­cov­er Luke Jerram’s Muse­um of the Moon. An incred­i­ble fac­sim­i­le of the Moon mea­sur­ing sev­en metres in diam­e­ter, the art­work fea­tures 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the lunar sur­face. At an approx­i­mate scale of 1:500,000, each cen­time­tre of the inter­nal­ly lit spher­i­cal sculp­ture rep­re­sents 5km of the moon’s sur­face. A fusion of lunar imagery and moon­light, the instal­la­tion also fea­tures a sur­round sound com­po­si­tion cre­at­ed by BAFTA and Ivor Nov­el­lo award win­ning com­pos­er Dan Jones.

Moon Music

It was writ­ten in the stars that one piece of music would find its way onto the Blue­dot bill. US reg­gae col­lec­tive the Easy Star All-Stars will be appear­ing with a ren­di­tion of their first album Dub Side of the Moon, a rework­ing of the clas­sic Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon. The Radio Sci­ence Orches­tra will per­form Music Out of the Moon and clas­si­cal-infused art rock trio Stems will pro­vide a live score for a trio of George Mélies films – A Trip to the Moon (1902), The King­dom of the Fairies (1903) and The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon (1907).

For tick­ets and infor­ma­tion vis­it: discoverthebluedot.com