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GLPA Newsletter Incorporates Small Sections of Several NASA Images for Its Page Mastheads IMAGE CREDITS Cover Design: Emily Hromi ([email protected]) Planetarium and Theater Manager, Grand Rapids Public Museum The current design of the GLPA Newsletter incorporates small sections of several NASA images for its page mastheads. These and other images can be accessed from NASA websites such as Mars Exploration, Scientific Visualization Studio, and Hubble Space Telescope websites at www.spacetelescope.org/images/, heritage.stsci.edu, and hubblesite.org/ gallery. And because all these photos are from NASA, they are free to use (with proper credit). Image Credits page background image: NGC 2074 in the Large Magellanic Cloud Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio (STScI) Image Credits page inset image: M96: A Galactic Maelstrom Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA and LEGUS Team State News Masthead: Young stars in the “wing” of the Small Magellanic Cloud Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC and University of Potsdam, JPL-Caltech, and STScI Bulletin Board Masthead: M13: A Celestial Snow Globe of Stars Credit: NASA, ESA, and Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Articles Masthead: Newborn stars within the Prawn Nebula Credit: European Southern Observatory IPS Update Masthead: Big Blue Marble Earth Credit: R. Stockli, A. Nelson, F. Hasler, NASA/ GSFC/ NOAA/ USGS The annual conference is just around the corner! I hope you can join us in Toledo, Ohio. It looks like it is going to be another great conference. The Ritter Planetarium staff President’s and the Conference Planning Team have been working hard to get everything ready. I wanted to call your attention Message to a few aspects of the conference related to the organization. GEOFF HOLT ● Annual Meeting: Our Annual Business Meeting takes place during lunch on Saturday. It is important that you attend this meeting. We need a quorum to fulfill our by- laws and requirements for maintaining our non-profit status. Also, we will be making important decisions regarding by-law changes and the election of our officers. ● Electing Our Officers: At the Annual Meeting during lunch on Saturday, we will hold elections for officers who will begin their term next year. You can learn more about the candidates by reading their statements in the summer newsletter. If you are unable to attend the conference, you can request an absentee ballot by contacting the Membership Chair. You can do this while renewing your membership. ● By-law Changes: The Executive Committee is bringing before you several minor recommended changes to our By- laws. Most of them are suggesting language changes to be more precise, consistent, and inclusive. We are also proposing a new officer position to replace the IPS (International Planetarium Society) Representative. This position was eliminated due to changes in the IPS governance structure. (continued on page 23) Despite the long hours and extra work that Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary likely meant for many of you, I hope you were Issue 205 able to enjoy the opportunity to visit (or re-visit) that watershed moment in the history of space exploration, when a significant portion of the world’s population stood transfixed in front of a television or radio to witness events that would have seemed impossible only a few years before. Although Apollo 11 became the space mission that most Americans today know something about, the Apollo program didn’t end there, and we owe it to our audiences and to history to explain to our visitors that Neil and Buzz’ sojourn onto the lunar soil that day may have been the end of one amazing goal to reach the Moon, but it was also the beginning EDITOR’S Message of an equally important goal of exploring the Moon and Bart Benjamin 127 deriving scientific value from our visits there. We should remind ourselves and explain to our audiences that significant scientific achievements and discoveries were made during the five additional lunar landing missions. Amazingly, these missions extended the time that astronauts explored the Moon’s surface from Apollo 11’s 2½ hours to a grand total of 3⅓ days of accumulated EVA exploration by the time Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt closed the hatch of their LM for the final time on December 13, 1972! We should remember — even if our visitors don’t — that the 50th anniversaries of Apollos 12 through 17 will resume this November and don’t end until December of 2022. Students often complain that history is just a series of memorized names and dates. That said, was Project Apollo more than three astronauts and the events of July, 1969? You bet it was! We can better serve history and the legacy of Apollo by not making it a singular event, but explaining that in the early 1970s, NASA undertook a series of increasingly complex space expeditions that explored five additional regions of the Moon, created an entirely new science of (continued on page 23) 3 STATE NEWS The William M. Staerkel Planetarium welcomed new director Erik Johnson this summer. [See photo below] Erik is no stranger to the Staerkel staff, as he’s been STATE CHAIRS using the planetarium to instruct his college students since 2011. He is also ILLINOIS: Renae Kerrigan very actively involved with the Peoria Riverfront Museum Champaign-Urbana Astronomical Society and has helped to run both Peoria, Illinois regional and state Science Olympiad [email protected] tournaments for several years. Erik started his new role by adding his Lego Lunar Lander to INDIANA: Barbara Williams the Lego Saturn V lobby display. He’s now working with Merrillville Community Planetarium Merrillville, Indiana [email protected] MICHIGAN: Shannon Schmoll Abrams Planetarium East Lansing, Michigan [email protected] OHIO: Dale Smith BGSU Planetarium Bowling Green, Ohio [email protected] Operations Manager Cindy Reynolds, Producer Waylena McCully, and Presenter Tania Swigart to learn his way WISCONSIN/ Jean Creighton around and to plan for the coming school year. Both Erik MINNESOTA: Manfred Olson Planetarium and Waylena will attend the GLPA conference in Toledo. Milwaukee, Wisconsin The planetarium held an open house celebration in July. [email protected] Speakers included college administration and retired director Dave Leake. Community members and college staff learned about the past and present while looking BEYOND Mary Holt forward to the future. The James B. Kaler Lecture Series THE Morrison Planetarium continues this fall with talks on soils science, CubeSats, LAKES: San Francisco, California and diverse organism adaptations. Fall marks the return of [email protected] Solar Superstorms, Solar System Safari, Dark Matter Mystery, and holiday shows Season of Light and Santa’s Secret Star. Strickler Planetarium, located on the campus of Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois, reports that they updated their Digistar 3 system to a Digistar 6 in August. 5 STATE NEWS Autumnal Equinox, 2019 The Cernan Earth & Space Center of Triton College in River Grove had a very successful summer of rocket classes. [Read more about them in Kris McCall’s illustrated article on page 29]. The last two days of rocket camp overlapped with the start of several exciting planetarium upgrades. First, the Cernan Center staff worked with McKay from E&S to install new computers and Digistar 6 software to drive their existing JVC projector. [See photo ➞ ]. Bowen Technovation visited last September to install a subwoofer and digital signal processor and came back in late-June after E&S left to install left and right rear and front center speakers, improving the dome to audio 5.1. Kris reports that “you can feel the difference!” Planetarium Technician Joe Schultz spent the last twelve months putting together and installing a DIY cove lighting system, including a rubber trough around the dome perimeter. While this has been a lengthy and piecemeal process and waiting has been hard, the staff is looking forward to maximizing the impact that these new capabilities will have on visitors. To increase awareness and attendance in a big city full of big museums, the Cernan Center sponsored the “Summer of Space” on WTTW PBS Chicago. Every time “Chasing the Moon,” NOVA, and other related programs aired, viewers saw a 30-second video produced by the Cernan Center staff before and after each show. You can see the video at bit.ly/33Rhm8w. Kris McCall, Director of the Cernan Center, reported that they saw an immediate impact on attendance and look forward to expanding their programming. She added, “This video would not have been possible without the generous assistance of the producers of awesome planetarium content and one composer musician. Thank you all.” The Deep Space concert series at the Dome Planetarium in Peoria has been a big success! Thank you to Emily Hromi for the inspiration. Their first two concerts of the series sold out, and the staff enjoyed great feedback from guests. Two more concerts were planned for August and September. The Peoria Riverfront Museum is continuing to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. A giant timeline commemorating the many steps of human spaceflight was installed this summer [← See photo] and in September they will open an exhibition titled MOON, curated by Renae Kerrigan. The exhibit features artwork and artifacts related to early lunar mapping, human exploration, artwork inspired by the Moon, and a 13-foot diameter moon artwork by the British artist Luke Jarram. They were able to borrow objects from several GLPA planetariums to add to our exhibition. Each month, Chicago’s Adler Planetarium hosts Adler After Dark (AAD), a 21+ night event at the museum. The June AAD was Pride-themed, highlighting and celebrating the fusion of queer art and science and importance of identity, understanding, and self in the cosmos. The highlight of the night was Drag Me to the Stars, a drag show ‘in space’ visualized under the dome of the historic Sky Theater.
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