'Nightfall: Sky Full of Stars' event. Part of the Discover Middlesbrough festival

The other day I shared my photos from the behind-the-scenes torchlight tour of Teesside Archives and today I'll share what happened afterwards. (At this rate you'll feel like you're spending life with me in real time. Any minute now you're going to have to hang on while I go and find my gloves/change my boots/grab a biscuit or I might well try to persuade you to put the kettle on while I just scribble down a vital thought in a notebook or photograph my outfit for Instagram. Welcome to James's world.) Anyway ....

Following the archive tour James and I went for a wander around the the Nightfall: Sky Full of Stars event organised by Stellar Projects in Centre Square where we were met with ... 

Constellations:

... which were accompanied by the soundtrack of local children talking about them. 

Here are several of the constellations looking down from above - an unusual way to view stars - as viewed from high up on the deck of the MIMA gallery:

And here's another peeking out below us as we pose for a ubiquitous 'us in a reflection' shot on the MIMA staircase:

And here's MIMA itself which opened late for the event to serve food and to provide their deck as a viewing point and as a place for an astronomy association to give telescope demonstrations ... 

... albeit into a rather cloudy sky. But not to worry as there were plenty of stars to see elsewhere. 

This stellar lantern hypnotically turned and turned and, through the cut out lettering on the side, it reminded us that "We are made of star stuff".

You can see the lantern in motion by hopping over to my short little video of it on Instagram.

Then there were Stuart Langley's pieces, such as this sea-glass and neon planet:

And this stained-glass and neon half dome which, when viewed in its mirrored base became whole ...

... and which totally reminded me of the dome from the Crystal Maze. (I can just imagine it filled with tiny contestants trying to stuff gold and silver foil squares down the front of their shell suit tops!)

(You might remember a similar stained glass/mirror idea - but with a rainbow - which I blogged about last year. That was another of Langley's pieces which you can catch in my blog post here.)

And finally ... the good old Centre Square fountains looked great in the moody lighting (alongside me trying to get a clever 'me taking a photo of my shadow on you while you take a photo of the fountains' shot).

And finally ... you can get a feel for the night's atmosphere by the sounds captured in this video ... the roar of the water, the mellow music ... and the kids squealing as they get sprinkled by the water jets:

All in all - what with the archive torchlight tour to start, and the arty star gazing to follow then getting home by 9pm to a warm house - it was a lovely way to spend a Friday night. Far more my style than heading into town to go to a pub or club.

This was the second year in a row the town hosted an ' after dark' event (I blogged last year's here) - last time the theme was 'Don't Be Afraid of the Dark' and this was all things stellar ... I'll look forward to seeing what 2017's nighttime experience brings.

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Before I go thank you thank you for all the support you've been leaving on my previous post and on my Facebook page by letting me know you'd be interested in a copy of my book so I can gauge print numbers. It really does means the world to me.

I'll share more news once I have some!

Julie