July 29th
Today we look at the mysterious dwarf planet Eris, but in case you don’t have a suitable telescope, we’ll just give some background information. Although it had obviously been around for some time (in as much as any planet is round), its existence was discovered in January 2005 but not actually announced until this date that year.

Although a dwarf planet, the new discovery was larger than Pluto, and in the absence of any bid from Snow White’s friends, the discovering astronomers did, for a time refer to the find as Xena, after the TV Warrior Princess (although one of the team favoured ‘Lila’, coincidentally not dissimilar to the name of his new-born daughter). After great debate – the official alternative name UB2003 wasn’t catchy, Persephone (in mythology, Pluto’s wife) was already an asteroid, and most other Greek/Roman mythological characters were taken – the naming body settled on Eris (after the Goddess of Discord who had an apple which helped start the Trojan War – it’s a long story, see Homer (the Greek one) for further details). Anyway, the Xena camp had a slight victory in getting Eris’ moon named Dysnomia, which means ‘Lawlessness’ – Lucy Lawless being the actress who played Xena! And today’s theme? Well we could suggest ‘Heavenly Bodies’ or ‘Warriors in Space’ – why does everything get back to ‘Star Wars’?
If that theme is too difficult you could just go with ‘An Out Of This world’ costume party – this gives your guests the opportunity to wear a Superman costume, or a basically any science fiction type of character. You could even use this theme and go as your favourite dead person, such as Marilyn Monroe, or what about a devil costume?