About the Project
I think I was about nine years old. We had come to visit friends of my parents. I was standing on a balcony, it was already dark outside, and at some point I asked myself a question: do we live on the outside or the inside of Earth?
If it was inside, how would rockets get into space? Would they break through a shell? And if it was outside, then the people living on the bottom side of the planet should fall off. Back then I decided it had to be outside. I figured out the "falling Australians" problem much later.
Questions like that are where my interest in the sky, physics, and the way the world works began.
Later that interest became more conscious. At school, and then at a physics and mathematics lyceum, my favorite subjects were physics and mathematics (unexpectedly!). I was fascinated by astronomy, took part in olympiads, and enjoyed the fact that science helps us understand the structure of the world better.
At university I started tutoring. Working with students helped me learn how to explain difficult things in simple language. By the way, I still teach online. Feel free to reach out!
At some point I was lucky to meet a girl who was just as fascinated by space as I was. Around the same time I began a mutually useful collaboration with the "Four Eyes" telescope store chain. As a result, Free Sky Observations appeared: a telescope on the street, an open sky, and people who simply walk by, stop, look through the eyepiece, and suddenly see the Moon, Jupiter, or Saturn with their own eyes. The bravest ones even ask questions. It is wonderful when a person is not afraid to ask a "silly question"!
On behalf of the store, and later independently, I managed to visit dozens of city schools with different activities. We explored not only astronomy, but also looked through real microscopes at the inhabitants of the invisible world.
At the same time, I worked with the children’s center "Orange Telescope". I taught classes there. Based on those classes, I decided to create my own development center for children. That is how "Laboratory" appeared. Until the COVID epidemic sent everyone into quarantine, we went outdoors, observed, and ran experiments. In my view, this is the best way to learn natural sciences.
Since 2017, I also several times took responsibility for the astronomy area at the science festivals “Vitamin of Science”. A great team, thousands of participants, and well-known science communicators on stages in Penza. Natalia and Daria created a fantastic project!
In the summer of 2025, the first sidewalk astronomy event in Georgia took place. Then came several elective classes at a private school and the idea to create a new project. That is how Lumen Astralis appeared.
It is a project that helps people encounter not only space, but also themselves. It helps them feel that the Universe is not something distant and alien, but a reality we are part of. Through meetings and conversations about science, we make astronomy and other natural sciences closer, clearer, and more human.
I want to create a space for conversation where people can ask questions, be amazed, think, find like-minded people, and rediscover the scale of the world and the place of humanity within it.
As one person important to me once said:
Do it for life on Earth!