Journal of the International Planetarium Society Vol. 41, No. 2

Home , Nehru Planetarium, Rogelio Bernal Andreo

Vol. 41, No. 2 March 2012

Journal of the International Planetarium Society

Discovering Orion’s nebula Page 10

Orion Nebula by Rogelio Bernal Andreo (DeepSkyColors.com)

Articles

June 2012 Vol. 41 No. 2 6 Guest Editorial: A Textbook for Becoming a Planetarian? Sam Storch Executive Editor 10 The curious life of the curious explorer: Nicolas- Sharon Shanks Claude Fabri de Peiresc Jean-Michel Faidit Ward Beecher Planetarium 16 Makeover of India’s Jawahar Planetarium Youngstown State University Piyush Pandey One University Plaza 18 Magic of the otherworld Christine Hogl Youngstown, Ohio 44555 USA +1 330-941-3619 20 Six years of the Jena FullDome Festival [email protected] Volkmar Schorcht 22 WPD: A database for planetariums across the world Advertising Coordinator Daniel Audeon Dr. Dale Smith, Interim Coordinator 24 The sun is setting on VGA Jeff Bowen (See Publications Committee on page 3) 28 How we do it: Resizing large numbers of images Membership Adam Thanz Individual: $65 one year; $100 two years 37 Under One Dome: AHHAA Science Centre Institutional: $250 first year; $125 annual renewal Planetarium Margus Aru Library Subscriptions: $45 one year; $80 two years All amounts in US currency Direct membership requests and changes of Columns address to the Treasurer/Membership Chairman 62 Book Reviews...... April S. Whitt 66 Calendar of Events...... Loris Ramponi Back Issues of the Planetarian 38 Educational Horizons ...... Jack L. Northrup IPS Back Publications Repository 4 In Front of the Console ...... Sharon Shanks maintained by the Treasurer/Membership Chair; 42 IMERSA News...... Judith Rubin contact information is on next page 48 International News...... Lars Broman 68 Last Light ...... April S. Whitt Index 60 Mobile News...... Susan Reynolds Button A cumulative index of major articles that have 30 Partycles...... Alex Cherman appeared in the Planetarian from the first issue 8 President’s Message ...... Dave Weinrich through the current issue is available online at 65 Waxing New...... Sharon Shanks www.ips-planetarium.org/planetarian/planetarian_ index.pdf Index of Advertisers Final Deadlines allsky.de...... 30 March: January 21 Astro-Tec...... 9 June: April 21 Audio Visual Imagineering ...... 23 September: July 21 Bays Mountain Productions ...... 51 December: October 21 Bowen Technovation...... 39 California Academy of Sciences...... 29 Clark Planetarium/Hansen Dome ...... 67 Associate Editors Denver Museum of Nature & Science...... 59 Digitalis Education Solutions, Inc...... 63 Book Reviews Editor-at-Large International April S. Whitt Steve Tidey Lars Broman Evans & Sutherland ...... 27, outside back cover The Elumenati ...... 49 Calendar Education Last Light Loris Ramponi Jack Northrup April S. Whitt Global Immersion...... 5 GOTO INC ...... inside front cover Cartoons IMERSANews Mobile News Alexandre Judith Rubin Susan Button Konica Minolta Planetarium Co. Ltd ...... 31 Cherman Live Interactive Planetarium Symposium ...... 65 NSC Creative...... 15 R.S.A. Cosmos ...... inside back cover On the Cover: Sky-Skan, Inc ...... 33, centerfold, 36 This image of the Orion Nebula, like many of Bernal An- dreo’s astrophotos, has appeared in many places, in- Spitz, Inc...... 19, 41, 45, 47, 57 cluding Astronomy Picture of the Day (apod.nasa.gov) You Can Do Astronomy...... 7 and as my computer’s desktop wallpaper. When it Zeiss, Inc...... 43 came time to decide on this issue’s cover, it was easy to select a version of the Orion Nebula that evoked such a sense of art and wonder. I hope that Nicolas- International Planetarium Society home page: Claude Fabri de Peiresc would have approved. You can www.ips-planetarium.org read more about this curious scientist starting on page 10. Planetarian home page: www.ips-planetarium.org/planetarian Andreo makes his images available through Creative Commons. You can see more of his work at DeepSky- Guidelines for Contributors and Advertisers: Colors.com. www.ips-planetarium.org/planetarian/guidelines.html

June 2012 Planetarian 1 Affiliate Representatives

Association of Brazilian British Association Great Plains Planetarium Rocky Mountain Planetariums of Planetaria Association Planetarium Officers Alexandre Cherman Jenny Shipway Jack Dunn Association Planetário do Rio de Janeiro Planetarium Manager Ralph Mueller Planetarium Rick Greenawald President R. Vice-Governador INTECH Science Centre & University of Nebraska-Lincoln Faulkner Planetarium Dave Weinrich Rubens Berardo, 100 Planetarium 210 Morrill Hall Herrett Center Planetarium Rio de Janeiro RJ Telegraph Way, Morn Hill Lincoln, Nebraska College of Southern Idaho Minnesota State Brazil 22451-070 Winchester, SO2 11H 68588-0375 USA P. O. Box 1238 University-Moorhead +55 (21) 2274-0046 ext. 264 United Kingdom +1 402-472-2641 315 Falls Avenue 1104 7th Avenue South +55 (21) 2529-2149 fax +44 1 962 891916 +1 402-475-8899 fax Twin Falls, Idaho Moorhead alexandre.cherman@ +44 1962 868524 fax [email protected] 83303-1238 USA Minnesota 56563 USA planetario.rio.rj.gov.br JennyShipway@ www.spacelaser.com/gppa +1 208-732-6659 +1 218-477-2969 planetarios.org.br intech-uk.com +1 208-736-4712 fax +1 218-477-5864 fax www.intech-uk.com [email protected] [email protected] www.planetarium.org.uk Italian Association herrett.csi.edu/ Association of of Planetaria faulkner_overview.asp Dutch-Speaking Canadian Association Loris Ramponi Past-President Planetariums/PLANed of Science Centres National Archive of Planetaria Dr. Tom Mason, Director Chris Janssen Ian C. McLennan c/o Centro Studi e Ricerche Armagh Planetarium Leunenstraat 6a #404 - 1275 Haro Street Serafino Zani Russian Planetariums College Hill 3950 Bocholt Vancouver, British Columbia via Bosca 24, C.P. 104 Association Armagh BT61 9DB Belgium V6E 1G1 Canada I 25066 Lumezzane Zinaida P. Sitkova Northern Ireland + 32 89464969 +1 604-681-4790 (Brescia) Italy Nizhny Novgorod United Kingdom [email protected] phone + fax +39 30 872 164 Planetarium +44 (0)2837 524725 www.planed.org [email protected] +39 30 872 545 fax Revolutsionnja Street 20 +44 (0)2837 526187 fax [email protected] [email protected] 603002 Nizhny +44 (0)771 0013453 cell www.ianmclennan.com [email protected] Novgorod, Russia [email protected] Association of French- www.planetaritaliani.it +7 831 246-78-80 www.armaghplanet.com Speaking Planetariums Chinese Planetarium +7 831 246-77-89 fax Agnès Acker Society [email protected] President-Elect Observatoire de Strasbourg Jin Zhu Japan [email protected] Thomas W. Kraupe 11, rue de l’université Beijing Planetarium Planetarium Society Planetarium Hamburg 67000 Strasbourg France No. 138 Xizhimenwait Street Kaoru Kimura Hindenburgstraße 1 b +33 3 90 24 24 67 Beijing, 1000044 Japan Science Foundation D-22303 Hamburg +33 3 90 24 24 17 fax P.R. China Kitanomaru Park, Chiyoda-ku Southeastern Deutschland [email protected] +86 10-5158-3311 Tokyo, 102-0091 Japan Planetarium +49 0 (40) 428 86 52-21 [email protected] +86 10-5158-3312 fax [email protected] Association +49 0 (40) 428 86 52-99 fax www.aplf-planetariums.org [email protected] www.shin-pla.info John Hare +49 0 (40) 4279 24-850 e-fax Ash Enterprises +49 0 (40) 172-40 86 133 cell Council of German 3602 23rd Avenue West thomas.kraupe@ Association of Mexican Planetariums Middle Atlantic Bradenton, Florida planetarium-hamburg.de Planetariums Thomas W. Kraupe Planetarium 34205 USA www.rdp-planetarium.de Ignacio Castro Pinal Planetarium Hamburg Society +1 941-746-3522 Torres de Mixcoac, A6-702 Hindenburgstraße 1 b Patty Seaton [email protected] Executive Secretary C.P. 01490, México City D-22303 Hamburg H.B. Owens Science Center www.sepadomes.org Lee Ann Hennig D.F. México Deutschland 9601 Greenbelt Road Planetarium, Thomas +52 (55) 5500 0562 +49 0 (40) 428 86 52-21 Lanham-Seabrook, Jefferson High School +52 (55) 5500 0583 fax +49 0 (40) 428 86 52-99 fax Maryland 20706 USA for Science and Technology [email protected] +49 0 (40) 4279 24-850 e-fax +1 301-918 8750 Southwestern 6560 Braddock Road cosmos.astro.uson.mx/ thomas.kraupe@ +1 301-918 8753 fax Association of Alexandria, Virginia 22312 USA AMPAC/AMPACintro.htm planetarium-hamburg.de [email protected] Planetariums +1 703-750-8380 www.rdp-planetarium.de Rachel Thompson +1 703-750-5010 fax Noble Planetarium [email protected] Association of Spanish European/ Nordic Planetarium Fort Worth Museum of Planetariums Mediterranean Association Science and History Treasurer and Javier Armentia Planetarium Aase Roland Jacobsen 1600 Gendy Street Planetario de Pamplona Association The Steno Museum Fort Worth, Texas Membership Chair Sancho Ramirez, 2 Manos Kitsonas Planetarium 76107 USA Shawn Laatsch E-31008 Pamplona Eugenides Planetarium C.F. Moellers Alle 2 +1 817-255-9409 Navarra Spain 387 Syngrou Avenue University of Aarhus +1 817-732-7635 fax All fiscal matters: +34 948 260 004 17564 P. Faliro DK-8000 Aarhus C +1 682-233-0822 cell P.O. Box 4451 +34 948 260 056 Athens, Greece Denmark [email protected] Hilo, Hawaii 96720 USA +34 948 261 919 fax +30 210 946 9674 +45 89423975 rachelsusanthomp- [email protected] +30 210 941 7372 fax [email protected] [email protected] All other correspondence: gestion@pamplonetario. [email protected] www.stenomuseet.dk southwesternassociationof- ‘Imiloa Astronomy infonego-cio.com planetariums.art.office- Center of Hawai’i Great Lakes Planetarium live.com/default.htm 600 ‘Imiloa Place Association Pacific Planetarium Hilo, Hawaii 96720 USA Australasian Planetarium Jeanne Bishop Association Society Westlake Schools Gail Chaid +1 808-969-9735 Mark Rigby, Curator Planetarium 1320 Glen Dell Drive +1 808-969-9748 fax Sir Thomas Brisbane Parkside Intermediate School San Jose, California [email protected] Planetarium 24525 Hilliard Road 95125 USA Mt. Coot-tha Road, Westlake, Ohio 44145 USA +1 408-540-8879 cell Toowong +1 440-899-3075 x2058 +1 408-288-8525 Brisbane, Queensland +1 440-835-5572 fax [email protected] 4066 Australia jeanneebishop@ sites.csn.edu/ +61 7 3403 2578 wowway.com planetarium/PPA +61 7 3403 2575 fax www.glpaweb.org mark.rigby@ brisbane.qld.gov.au www.aps-planetarium.org

2 Planetarian June 2012 Standing Committees IPS Permanent Mailing Address Awards Committee Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70802 Finance Committee Prof. Lars Broman, Chair USA President, Past President, Presi- Teknoland +1 225-344-5272 dent Elect, Treasurer, Secretary International Planetarium Society Stångtjärnsv 132 +1 225-214-4027 fax c/o Shawn Laatsch SE-791 74 Falun [email protected] Membership Committee Sweden Shawn Laatsch, Chair Treasurer/Membership Chair +46 2310177 Conference Host- 2014 ‘Imiloa Astronomy Cen- All fiscal business: [email protected] Dr. Jin Zhu, Director ter of Hawaii P.O. Box 4451 www.teknoland.se Beijing Planetarium 600 ‘Imiloa Place 138 Xizhimenwai Street Hilo, Hawaii 96720 USA Hilo, Hawaii 96720 USA Conference Committee Beijing 100044 China +1 808-969-9735 All other correspondence: Dave Weinrich +86 10-5158-3007 +1 808-969-9748 fax ‘Imiloa Astronomy Planetarium +86 10-5158-3312 fax [email protected] Minnesota State [email protected] Center of Hawai’i University-Moorhead Publications Committee 600 ‘Imiloa Place 1104 7th Avenue South Elections Committee Dr. Dale W. Smith, Chair Moorhead Martin George, Chair BGSU Planetarium Hilo, Hawaii 96720 USA Minnesota 56563 USA Launceston Planetarium 104 Overman Hall +1 808-969-9735 +1 218-477-2969 Queen Victoria Museum Physics &Astronomy Department +1 808-969-9748 fax +1 218-477-5864 fax Wellington Street Bowling Green State University [email protected] Launceston Tasmania 7250 Bowling Green, Ohio 43403 USA [email protected] Australia +1 419-372-8666 Conference Host-2012 +61 3 6323 3777 +1 419-372-9938 fax IPS Web Site: Jon Elvert +61 3 6323 3776 fax [email protected] Irene W. Pennington Planetarium [email protected] www.ips-planetarium.org Louisiana Art & Science Museum 100 South River Road Please notify the Editor of any changes on these two pages. Ad Hoc Committees Contact the Treasurer/Membership Chair for individual member address Education Committee International Armand Spitz changes and general circulation and Jack L. Northrup Relations Committee Planetarium Education Fund Dr. Martin Luther King, Martin George, Chair Finance Committee billing questions. Jr. Planetarium Launceston Planetarium King Science and Technology Queen Victoria Museum Technology Committee Magnet Center Wellington Street Jack Dunn 3720 Florence Blvd. Launceston, Tasma- Ralph Mueller Planetarium Omaha, NE 68110 USA nia 7250 Australia University of Nebraska- Lincoln +1 402-557-4494 +61 3 6323 3777 210 Morrill Hall [email protected] +61 3 6323 3776 fax Lincoln, Nebraska webmail.ops.org/~jack.northrup [email protected] 68588-0375 USA +1 402-472-2641 Full-Dome Video Committee Outreach Committee +1 402-475-8899 fax Antonio Pedrosa, Chair Jon W. Elvert, Chair [email protected] Navegar Foundation Irene W. Pennington Planetarium www.spacelaser.com/gppa Centro Multimeios Espinho Louisiana Art & Science Museum Av. 24, nº800, 100 South River Road Web Committee 4500-202 Espinho Baton Rouge, Louisi- Alan Gould, Chair Portugal ana 70802 USA Holt Planetarium +351 22 7331190 +1 225-344-5272 Lawrence Hall of Science +351 22 7331191 fax +1 225-214-4027 fax University of California The Planetarian (ISN 0090-3213) is pub- [email protected] [email protected] Berkeley, California 94720-5200 USA lished quarterly by the International History Committee Portable +1 510-643-5082 Planetarium Society. ©2012 Interna- John Hare, IPS Historian Planetarium Committee +1 510-642-1055 fax Ash Enterprises Susan Reynolds Button, Chair [email protected] tional Planetarium Society, Inc., all rights 3602 23rd Avenue West Quarks to Clusters reserved. Opinions expressed by authors Bradenton, Florida 34205 USA 8793 Horseshoe Lane are personal opinions and are not neces- +1 941-746-3522 Chittenango, NY 13037 [email protected] +1 315-687-5371 sarily the opinions of the International [email protected] Planetarium Society, its officers, or [email protected] agents. Acceptance of advertisements, announcements, or other material does not imply endorsement by the Interna- tional Planetarium Society, its officers or agents. The Editor welcomes Let- ters to the Editor and items for consid- eration for publication. Please consult “Guidelines for Contributors” at www. ips-planetarium.org/planetarian/guidelines.html. The Editor reserves the right to edit any manuscript to suit this publication’s needs.

June 2012 Planetarian 3 •• Ditto for parents. •• Teaching every grade level how to follow In Front of the Console verbal instructions and how to be consider- ate of others: “don’t sit on the end seat—that forces everyone else to step over you. Count Sharon Shanks six seats and sit on number six. (Because our Ward Beecher Planetarium dome is also a classroom, there are “bad” Youngstown State University seats outside of dome visibility. Yes, it’s a Youngstown, OH 44555 USA major daily headache to seat our field trips.) •• Ditto for parents. [email protected] •• Teaching critical thinking skills: “Can I show you real stars? No, of course not. Now you tell me the reason why.” The two an- swers I look for are “we’re inside” and “it’s expand your I asked a question on Dome-L recently Fantasizing, if we could actually charge about fees charged by other planetariums in that “value of education” amount, we would daytime.” I started that when I overheard a an attempt to write a memo for our area Head have raked in $1,740 for the group of 80 sec- mother complain that I hadn’t shown her Start* program explaining and justifying the ond graders and their parents this week who kids “real stars” after a Saturday afternoon amount we quote for in-kind service provid- won the “most out of control and rude group” program. ed by our planetarium. I’ve been using $350/ award for this school year and wasted their •• Ditto for parents. world hour, with $300 for the facility and $50 for the time and mine. •• Teaching the meaning of the word “no”: professional service. You might counter my thinking with “Because it gets very dark in the planetar- My planetarium is two-thirds free and open “that’s for a college class, and these are just ium, for safety reasons you cannot come there’s a whole universe waiting to the public. We do not charge for field trips pre-school kids. Shouldn’t you use a smaller back in if you leave to go to the rest room.” and our public programs; Youngstown State amount?” Maybe I should list this as toilet training. University sees those as part of its communi- I thought of that. College students should •• Ditto with explanation marks for parents, ty education/service mission. Our third major reasonably expect (but don’t always get) a especially the mother who left twice to take job, undergraduate education, comes with a teacher with a terminal degree in his or her her child to the rest room; the first time I price tag, of course. area of expertise. Does that mean that pre- heard her pounding and let her back in be- As expected, I received a range of amounts school kids should expect or be satisfied with cause it was early, but reminded her again reflecting the diversity of planetariums. Many less? about the safety rule. The second time she university planetariums do not charge or The Head Start requirements are specific propped open the door, which was enough charge a minimal amount, so coming up with when it comes to allowable in-kind contribu- to induce a stray couple to walk into the a base there isn’t possible. Planetariums in sci- tions: they want performance standards met, dark room and try to find seats. ence centers and museums sometimes have including those for education and early child- •• Teaching the meaning of the word “liabili- the planetarium admission as part of their hood development. Their educational experi- ty.” See above. overall gate charge, and sometimes charge an ences must be “developmentally and linguis- Maybe I should double my in-kind amount additional, separate fee. tically appropriate, recognizing that children to reflect the amount of non-astronomy have individual rates of development as well teaching that I do—that we all do. What else to compare with? as individual interests, temperaments, lan- Or, another way to look at it: we really can’t I tried checking similar venues in my area. guages, cultural backgrounds, and learning place a value on what we do under our domes. The only comparable site is our relatively new styles.” How can you put a pricetag on eyes lighting (and really well done) children’s science and Many apologies to some of my colleagues, up or the joy on a young face? technology museum, and that was for parties. but not all faculty with terminal degrees are They also have “guided” programs that in- able to provide a developmentally appropri- Not ending on a happy note volve a staff member explaining the science ate educational experience for 3- to 5-year Right at presstime I received some depress- (versus “self-guided,” or “let the kids run wild” olds. ing news from my friend Eddy Pirotte. experience). “Just wanted to let planetarians and friends I finally decided that the only way I could What about the extra teaching? worldwide know that as of May 1, 2012, I no come up with an accountable amount was to And then there’s all the “fringe” learning longer work in the planetarium Beisbroek in figure how much it costs an in-state under- that goes on: leaning how to behave in a pub- Bruges, Belgium. graduate student to take one class of the in- lic setting, experiencing a place other than “After a career of 20 years in astronomical troduction to astronomy course. I reasoned home (and for some of these little ones, it’s observatories and planetaria, I am now try- that this amount would cover everything: use their first trip to a “big” city), sitting and lis- ing to find another employment. The astro- ﬁ nd out more with us at IPS 2012, Baton Rouge of the facility and its equipment, utilities, in- tening quietly, using public rest rooms, fol- nomical society isn’t that large in Belgium, so surance, personnel, fringe benefits, and all the lowing directions, and so much. Most of us I doubt I’ll ever be able to transmit again my hidden costs. teach these areas instinctually and don’t put enthusiasm in astronomy to ‘children’ aged I came up with roughly $21.75, which, mul- a price tag on our actions. 5 to 95. As you all know, our job/passion is a tiplied by 17, the usual number of students in Just for fun, I came up with some “add- very pleasing one, but sometimes ‘powers one Head Start class, gave me $369.75 as the fair ed value” benefits of a planetarium visit that that be’ have a different view. (eddy.pirotte@ the digital planetarium market value if we charged for attendance. should be figured into our “fair market value.” telenet.be)” That turns out to be pretty close to my “in- •• Teaching the teachers basic astronomy Eddy was among those in Europe who pub- by global immersion. stinct” quote. without letting them know that we’re do- licly protested the firing of Chris Janssen from no limits. ing it. A demeaned teacher will not come the Europlanetarium in Genk, Belgium. (See * Head Start is a federally-funded early education pro- back. the September 2011 Planetarian.) I gram for disadvantaged children.

4 Planetarian June 2012 UK: +44 (0) 845 0 456225 | USA: +1 720 259 1639 | [email protected] | www.globalimmersion.com

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By Sam Storch Although there is probably little commer- venerable O. Richard Norton book The Plan- cial market for such a book, a lot of what we etarium and Atmospherium,7 theWindow to Planetarium Director (retired) do inspires us anyway. What would be includ- the Universe volume which was published by Edwin P. Hubble Planetarium ed in such a text? What course materials al- Zeiss,8 and others. All of these were available Brooklyn, New York ready exist? for student use on demand. Over the years, some colleges have offered The Zeiss book had an excellent historical courses which endeavored to be training to section, literally taking the reader from the enter the planetarium field.4 Such courses Aratus Globe through history to the Zeiss VI, A Textbook for Becoming didn’t rely entirely on textbooks. When I be- then the latest and greatest. There were ex- a Planetarian? gan my own training of student planetarium cellent sections which dissected the mod- directors (as many as 30 high school juniors ern planetarium projector, and that mate- I recall years ago periodically receiving and seniors at a time!), there was specific train- rial could be used with the much simpler, sales material with an imprint on the out- ing for our planetarium’s controls and many yet quite similar, construction of our trusty er envelope exclaim- demonstrations at the console, one on one or GOTO Mercury S.1, which we regularly stud- ing “Now anybody one on two. ied up close using ladders or lab stools while can become a plan- In the classroom, there were intensive ses- somebody working behind the console “made etarium director!” sions on the history of the projection plan- things happen.” Whether I cringed or etarium and on some basic “mechanical as- We also had years and years of both smirked depended on Sky & tronomy” of the sort that would not be and magazines, the number of lamp Telescope Astronomy Griffith encountered in most of today’s “Astro 101” , and available for student failures my planetar- Observer Mercury courses. use in creating their own brief planetarium ium had experienced At that time, in the late 1970s, the most presentations, a course requirement. Those that week. useful text was a slim volume written by programs required creating a script or out- The same compa- the late Clarence Cleminshaw titled line, slides, effects that we didn’t already have ny1 is still in business The Be- .5 I recall ordering available and more. marketing small plan- ginner’s Guide to the Skies 40 copies from the publisher and getting a The students presented to the toughest etarium projectors to phone call expressing surprise; nobody had critics available, their peers, using evaluation the educational mar- ordered that title in years, let along 40 copies! sheets in the dark! The programs encouraged ket. Could anyone at all really become a plan- That book had a plenty of condensed sum- students to think in terms of careful prepara- etarium director? maries of the usual constellation and star lore tion, self-confidence, and poise before an audi- It has been nearly four decades since those stuff, but had a wonderful, yet-to-be-equaled ence, and as an additional benefit, resulted in a envelopes arrived. body of material on what I’d call “mechanical very well-equipped theater with well-stocked Recently, I was asked if I thought that a vi- astronomy.” slide files. able market existed for a textbook to written Although the days of graphic arts films and for use by prospective planetarians.2 transfer lettering are gone, the planetarium I wondered for a while if there really was a It’s about understanding It was actually possible to get a group of ex- still shows beautiful the sky as it always has. need for such a text to be written for students cited students to understand why the spring- Nowadays, however, the changes in tech- entering the planetarium field. My first incli- time young moons in New York were placed nology which sadly portend the gradual de- nation was to write an enthusiastic “yes!” Af- on the sky differently from those in the fall, mise of the optical-mechanical planetarium ter all, ours is a field that was both inspiring why winter full moons “rode” higher than altogether would require an honest author or and rewarding. summer ones, why stars rose and set “verti- course instructor to write or procure course At the same time, the rapid evolution of cally” under tropical skies but at more moder- materials which describe the generalities of technology in the field has changed many of ate angles from temperate latitudes, why stars digital planetarium theaters as well as the the employment dynamics; one need know and even the moon might stay above the ho- traditional theaters, and be specific enough nothing at all about astronomy or about the rizon at the poles, and much, much more. to provide some clues as to the specific skills sky itself to render complex graphics or to How did I know that they understood? needed for the student to be employable in to- purchase various “ready to push the start but- “Get behind the console and show me, using day’s planetarium environment. ton” materials. the star projector! No slides allowed!” Just as years ago, when colleges and uni- Sadly, there is a dearth of folks interest- Besides the Cleminshaw book and class sets versities offered planetarium training, there ed in jobs which are exciting but very low in of take-home copies of then-contemporary is still training by manufacturers which have salary; these individuals don’t even apply for college texts as Jastrow and Thompson, Pasa- been created to the specifics of their own tech- available scholarships.3 In these times, all stu- choff, or Zeilik, 6 we had several copies of the nologies. The Spitz Summer Institutes have dents would probably prefer to be managers gone from the training of optical planetarium of hedge funds or multinational companies. 4 Wagner College offered such courses in its plane- operators to teaching those who will work in But, I digress. tarium during the 1970s, as did Lycoming College’s Detweiler Planetarium, Michigan State University’s digital theaters like Sci-Dome. Similarly, LTI 1 MMI Corporation, Baltimore, Maryland. Abrams Planetarium, and others. 2 Personal communication via email with Tom Hamil- 5 Cleminshaw, Clarence. 1977. Beginner’s Guide to the 7 Norton, O. Richard. 1968. The Planetarium and Atmo- ton, March 25, 2012. Skies. New York, Thomas Y. Crowell and Co., ISBN spherium. Healdsburg, California, Naturegraph Pub- 3 Ibid. There is a perennial shortage of applicants for 0-690-01214-4. lishers. scholarships which support students wishing to en- 6 Substitute here whatever you prefer in your own 8 Hagar, Charles, F. 1980. Planetarium: Window to the ter the planetarium field. classroom. Universe. Oberkochen, Germany. Carl Zeiss.

6 Planetarian June 2012 In many states the rapid rise of standard- circulate describing how “the public wants to ized tests as a means of evaluating teachers see the stars and constellations but the plan- has led to the closing or mothballing of quite etarium staff wants to fly them through the a few school planetariums; teachers whose galaxies.” The philosophical “divide” doesn’t jobs are at risk will not teach anything other matter if the box office reports a decline in than what is covered by the tests given to the ticket sales. students for the sake of evaluating the performance of the teachers themselves. Virtual reality can’t always cut it This is a terrible situation, analogous to fir- Some analogies are made that computer ing doctors if their hospital patients eventu- programs could simulate dissections instead ally die (all do, eventually), and for now, little of using cadavers in medical school, that sim- can be done about this while the public mind- ulations of animals in natural environments set demonizes educators at all levels. Even col- (a three dimensional zoo on the big screen?) leges and universities are beginning to feel the could reduce the demand for actual zoologi- “heat” of public pressure to produce employ- cal parks, and so on. able graduates. This journal is not an appro- It does not matter to the “bean counters” priate forum for the discussion of the overall that a physician in training might not gain “mission” of education, although this writer’s the facility in the operating room which position ought to be evident. could only come from dexterity gained while Museum and large public planetariums are working on “the actual model.” Nor does it suffering the consequences of reduced bud- matter that there is reduced credibility among gets, fewer operating grants, declining admis- children that there really are animals in na- is training folks to sions from a public already “jaded” by televi- ture that are not merely fictional or fantastic operate Digital Starlab sion and computer software, and high costs to computer creations. setups. operate theaters. Both traditional and digital For those of us who love nature’s sky, there Although much useful material al- planetariums still do need to cover the costs of looms the worst of all possibilities. At a time ready exists for “traditional” planetarium employees, maintenance and service, the pro- when more and more humans live in areas training, I am aware of no material that ex- duction of new programs, and other operating where light pollution prevents them from ists at present of a general enough nature to expenses. ever seeing nature’s sky, the loss of the inspi- survive the vicissitudes of design, software, Many institutions find the cost for the to- ration generated by a planetarium sky cannot and model changes in the digital planetarium tal replacement of the traditional star projec- be quantified financially. technology that would be useful with any tor and theater special effects with the latest The planetarium field may be shrink- available equipment. digital equivalents to be so high as to recom- ing, though I hope it is not shriveling to the Other than anecdotal discussions dealing mend the abandonment or closing of the fa- point of death. The ease in obtaining use- with the “business side” of running a planetar- cility entirely as an economic consequence ful and credible information via the Internet ium theater—admissions control, useful soft- which overshadows all the unique merits of and other non-traditional media, from man- ware, budgeting, publicity, and more—would the planetarium itself. ufacturers, from equipment and planetarium an author need to include a chapter or two on The fact that a planetarium is the only de- program vendors, and through planetarium this “side” of the business in a textbook to be- vice ever invented by humans that can “save associations and professional societies does come a planetarian? the phenomena” of nature’s sky, its appear- not bode well for the sales of a “textbook” for Beyond general marketing and training spe- ance, and motions does not at all eclipse the learning to run a planetarium theater. cific to their own products, none of the major shrinking public appreciation and demand I wish it was otherwise. If you, the reader, show producers (Sky-Skan, Loch Ness, Spitz, for such facilities (yes, the pun is intended). have thoughts about all this, I invite you to E&S, etc.) have created materials for a training Public demand is not measured by the participate in the discussion. Is a textbook for course that would be “durable,” that is, have “wow” of the audience, but by the willingness becoming a planetarian needed? I validity beyond a year or three at most. of the patrons and the institutions to pay the admission price. Many stories and anecdotes Sam Storch is emailable via [email protected]. Can we keep material relevant? What must be done? If all of the technologies available in the digital planetarium field could somehow be studied with a “wide an - Making your programs accessible gle” approach, a body of material capable of withstanding the test of time could be creat - to visitors with disabilities ed. The author of such a text would have to carefully attend to the rapid evolution of the technology to avoid the book’s rapid transfer to the dustbin of history. You Can Do Astronomy LLC Is the planetarium field likely to expand sufficiently to attract candidates? At present, Accessibility Consulting & Design rapidly shifting economic considerations and Noreen Grice, President globalization are increasing the number of planetariums in evolving nations, while planetariums in the United States are being severe- ly curtailed in their operations by a number www.youcandoastronomy.com of vectors. www.YouCanDoAstronomy.com

June 2012 Planetarian 7 universe with as much passion and love of knowledge as possible and to help our visitors President’s Message interpret what they see in the sky.” Dave Weinrich One way to maintain the passion and en- Planetarium, Minnesota State University-Moorhead thusiasm that Phil mentions is to look at the 1104 7th Avenue South sky ourselves, to renew our own personal con- Moorhead, Minnesota 56563 USA nection with the universe. If we aren’t inspired, it’s hard to inspire our audiences. +1 218-477-2969 Our theaters are wonderful places that can +1 218-477-5864 fax show us the sky at any time of the day or [email protected] night, whether it’s clear or cloudy. If we have a digital projector we can take our audiences on voyages to the most distant reaches of out- Dear Friends and Fellow Planetarians more details on how to participate virtually. er and inner space, to places that we cannot This is my last President’s Message prior to As I mentioned in my last column, this is travel to with our present technology. our IPS 2012 conference in Baton Rouge. As the 40th anniversary of the first conference, But, no matter how fantastic our projector I write, it is exactly three months until our which was held in San Francisco in 1972. The might be, we should always remember that it opening reception on Sunday, July 22. planetarium world has changed greatly since is a simulator. We need to encourage our audi- This conference will be the culmination of that time, but one thing that has not changed ences to personally observe the night sky and over four years of planning and preparation. is the opportunity that we have to guide our to have their own personal experience with The initial 2012 conference proposals were visitors to a better understanding of the uni- the universe. brought to the IPS Council and the general verse. membership at the IPS 2008 Chicago confer- Although many of us have tools that we Make it real for the public ence. Council members at the 2009 Toulouse could have hardly dreamed of 40 years ago, Many of you probably operate telescopes Council meeting choose Baton Rouge after in- there is one thing that has not changed: the for your audiences at certain times, especial- put from members of each regional affiliate. importance of using whatever tools we have ly for special events like the May solar eclipse An incredible amount of planning and prep- to tell our engaging stories of science and the and the June transit of Venus. Seeing the aration has taken place in the ensuing three Universe. Storytelling is such a vital part of moon, a planet, or a deep sky object through years. what we do. a telescope is much different than looking at Conference host Jon Elvert and his team Attendees at the 2010 SEPA meeting at the a picture of it or viewing it on a CCD monitor. have set the stage for a rich and fulfilling con- Bays Mountain Planetarium were reminded When I looked at Sirius twinkling in the ference. Now the quality of our conference of that during a series of workshops on story- southwest a few minutes ago, I observed real experience depends on each one of us. We will telling. It behooves all of us to hone our sto- photons of light that had traveled for nearly have many exciting speakers, paper sessions, ry-telling skills. I encourage other regional af- 9 years from the star to my retina. It’s hard to workshops and vendor presentations. filiates to hold similar workshops during their imagine that one of our sun’s closest neigh- meetings. bors is so close, and yet so far away. Behind the scenes is important There are also many storytelling resources One of my favorite things to do on a warm Some of the most important activity that available online. An Internet search contain- summer evening is to sit on my front step, goes on at each conference is not scheduled, ing the terms “using stories to teach astrono- look at nearby stars and think back in my life however. It is the networking and discussions my” will list many relevant links. One of the and recall what I was doing when the light left that take place between and after the orga- best ones that I found, from the Astronomical from stars of varying distances. nized events. There will be many opportuni- Society of the Pacific, is titled “ASP: The Sto- Of course, the light from the majority of the ties and venues where that networking can ry of Astronomy.” Authors Mindy Kalchman stars that we can see at night left before you or take place. Let’s all resolve to make this the and Lorne Brown describe how to use story- I were born. When we look at the light from best IPS conference ever! telling as a part of astronomy lessons. Here is a the moon, a planet, a star or galaxy it’s as if we There were almost 400 people registered short quote from their article: have a connection with that object in a deep- for the conference as of late April. I am espe- “Because of this incredibly rich story histo- ly profound sense. cially pleased that we have people registered ry that permeates the science of astronomy, Another way to maintain our passion is to from 34 different countries, including, among it seems only logical that learning about the continue to continue our professional devel- others, Oman, Algeria, Pakistan, Ukraine, Den- fundamental principles and people involved opment, to never stop learning and growing. mark, Malaysia and Ghana. We even have in it, be accomplished through the telling and Over the years I have had times when I felt a registrant from Guam! There is a growing retelling of stories.” stuck in a rut and my passion was fading. Per- sense of anticipation in our worldwide com- sonally, I have found conferences, star parties munity. The importance of passion and working with colleagues in other parts of Visit the conference social media sites— I hope that all of you had a chance to read the world useful in rejuvenating my passion. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+— Phil Groce’s Guest Editorial in the last issue of Perhaps you can take a class, go on sabbati- to witness some of that excitement. Links to the Planetarian and that you were as inspired cal or volunteer your services to help in some these sites can be found on at the top of the by it as I was. If you haven’t read it, be sure to way in another planetarium in your home various sections of the conference website. do so. It is well worth rereading. Phil made country or another part of the world. I know Members who may not be able to attend the so many relevant points, but I was especially that many of you are doing such activities. conference personally will still be able to have struck by what he wrote about the role of the Here are two examples that I have recently a virtual presence at the opening ceremony, planetarium. heard of. the business meeting and the paper sessions. “In the fullness of time, I realized that the Planetarian Kyle Doane, who has worn Keep your eye on the conference website for role of the planetarium was to celebrate the (Continues on Page 30)

8 Planetarian June 2012 June 2012 Planetarian 9 The curious life of the curious explorer: Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc

Peirsec’s notes recounting the Orion Nebula discovery. Left: portrait by Claude Mellan. Wikimedia Commons

Orion Nebula by Rogelio Bernal Andreo (DeepSkyColors.com)

10 Planetarian June 2012 The French discoverer of the Orion Nebula

Four centuries ago in Aix-en-Provence, November 1610, Peiresc discovered the object now called Messier 42. Pre- sented here is a biographical approach to this major player of the 17th century, who contributed to the movement which helped to strengthen interest in mathematics throughout the world, beyond merely setting the stage for the discovery of the first nebula in the era of telescopes. He was a precursor to a new scientific method which combined observation and interpretation, but he fell prey to a quest for by Jean-Michel Faidit outstanding scholarship—or, how what we propose to call Astronomical Society of France “hyper-curiosity” in science can promote discoveries while impeding improvements in those who make them.

In the first third of the 17th century, Nico- prepare for his doctorate of law (which he side of the ordinary, bringing together an ex- las-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and astronomer defended on 18 January, 1604) following the traordinary curiosity cabinet, which was the Pierre Gassendi were surrounded by the Pro- lessons of legal adviser Jules Pacius of Beriga fruit of his correspondence with the European vençal school of thought, which originat- (1550-1635). scholars and artists of his time. In total, more ed the development of optical astronomy in Peiresc quickly became advisor to Aix, and than 10,000 letters were exchanged with some France. he agreed to be responsible for accompanying 500 correspondents.2 Alas, not all these corre- Thanks to geographical proximity, the dis- Guillaume du Vair to Paris, a trip enriched by spondences have endured through the centu- coveries of Galileo with the refractor tele- also traveling to England and Holland in 1606. ries, victim to the random fate of manuscripts scope were directly imported from the land Nicolas-Claude Fabri fully fits in the pro- which are at the will of the uncivilized hands south-east of France, and so it is no wonder file of the scholars of his time, coming from into which they are passed. that his contemporaries attempted to repli- wealthy families who were varied in their in- Peiresc’s library was just as eclectic, bring- cate these observations. vestments. From his social position, he was ing together some 5,400 volumes. All this was Nicolas-Claude Fabri (called “Lord of Pey- part of the privileged classes of the former re- done as an amateur, unlike Gassendi, who had resc” after 1604) was born December 1, 1580 gime of France. a career in sciences as a professor at the Col- at Belgentier Castle, north of Hyères.1 The loss lege of France. of his mother at a very young age affected his Library, curiosities reflect him This hard work earned Piersec the title character and his inclination towards learn- Driven by the wonder of learning, he some- “Prince of the amateurs,” extended by Pierre ing. times spent without limit to stock his library Bayle in his biographical dictionary, present- Over the years, he was educated at Bri- and to fill his cabinet of “oddities.” He would ed before the end of the 17th century; a wink gnoles, St-Maximin, the Avignon Jesuit Col- spend the course of a single day darting from to his responsibility of magistrate, as “Attor- lege and those of Tournon. At the age of 19, ac- one discipline to another, or balancing be- ney General of the Republic of Letters.” companied by his younger brother Palamède, tween several. Alternately an astronomer, lin- he made a journey to Italy from 1599 to 1602, guist, philologist, archaeologist, numisma- Discovery of the Orion Nebula where he met Galileo in Florence and attend- tist (collecting 18,000 coins and medals), and (NGC 1976) ed the wedding of Marie de Médici and Hen- Egyptologist, he was also passionate about zo- In 1609, Galileo pointed a telescope towards ri IV. It is on this occasion when he forged a ology and botany, creating a basic garden at the sky, discovering the craters of the moon, friendship with Peter Paul Rubens. his family home in Belgentier, where he stud- the phases of Venus, the satellites of Jupiter, Returning to France via Geneva and Lyon, ied various animals, including an elephant. and the myriad of stars in the Milky Way. His he set course to Montpellier in July 1602 to He was a physiologist from time to time; observations were published in March 1610 in one could find him studying the eye and the 1 In his remarkable book released in 1933, An Amateur, mechanism of vision. He appeared to possess 2 Robert Mandrou has created a map of the distri- Peiresc, Pierre Humbert tells us that in fact it is at the a phenomenal work capacity, a fertile imagi- bution of these letters in his book History of Euro- beginning of 1604 when Peiresc received his father’s nation, even declaring to be guided by premo- pean Thought (1973). This book was based on the domain of Peirets, in the High Verdon, that he estab- nitions. catalogue index of the library Inguimbertine of Car- lished the spelling and adopted the name that pos- pentras (mainly in France, Italy and Holland, but also Orion Nebula by Rogelio Bernal Andreo (DeepSkyColors.com) terity will retain, “Peiresc.” He was primarily a collector of things out- on the shores of the Mediterranean). June 2012 Planetarian 11 the Sidereus Nuncius or “Sidereal Messenger.” It is obvious that he could have never seen, Three months after its release from the or even simply imagined, that the nature of presses of Venetian printer Thomas Baglione, his work would gain him posterity in the his- one of the first copies found itself in Montpel- tory of astronomy. It is a fact that, at the time lier, in the hands of Jules Pacius, Peiresc’s for- of Peiresc’s discovery, astronomers were not mer law professor and now friend and corre- interested in nebulae. The object that became spondent, who remained an acquaintance to known as M42 would have to wait more than Galileo. a century until the small neighboring patch He and Peiresc evoked their revolution- of cloudiness would accompany it in the cata- ary observations, both by exchanging cor- logue of Messier as M43, which was discovered respondence and by embarking on a trip to by D’ortous de Mairan in 1731. Montpellier in 1610. They began to construct It would take almost a century for the ques- telescopes, an undertaking in which Peiresc tion of the nature of nebulae to be truly top- clearly proved to be more skillful. He accom- ical. plished, along with another amateur from This wonder of the winter sky which has Aix, Joseph Gaultier de la Valette, the first re- captivated observers was discovered and regis- fracting telescope known in France. tered as early as 1610, the year of the distribu- He first observed the craters of the moon, tion of Galileo’s work, which makes the con- and after that, the planets, and then the sat- tribution of Peiresc all the more significant. ellites of Jupiter. He invested himself in the creation of tables of the Jovian moons, con- Episodic curiosity and periods of vinced of their usefulness for the determina- intense observations: tion of longitudes; he was helped by Gaultier 1610-1612 and 1633-1636 in this work, which would remain unfinished. His interest in the sky seems gifted, although He also observed the stars, comparing their episodic. One can trace through one of his Ital- different brightness levels. ian correspondences duplicated in the library On November 26, 1610, barely three weeks of Nîmes (letter to Paolo Gualdo 20 February after having completed building his tele- 1605), which tells us that when he was 23, he scope, Peiresc discovered the Orion Nebula, was part of the first observers of the superno- contained in that magnificent winter con- va of Kepler in the constellation Ophiuchus stellation. Below the three stars of the belt, he “I was in a small village called Belgentier Oc- let his telescope wander the sky near the star tober passed, and I noticed the new star from which would later be designated q; he noticed Jupiter to the West... it sparkled, which made a cloudiness that he noted rightly as nubec- me decide that it was a fixed star, although its ula or “little cloud” in his notebooks, which grandeur was extraordinary in this place.” are preserved at Carpentras: “Coelum non erat It is unfortunate that he does not specify serenum adeoque magna apparebat nubecu- the date of his observation, because this super- la in Orionis media ut vix distingui potuerint nova had, in fact, been discovered on October duae stellae. Ac in suprema quoque stella ap- 9 by two Italians, Ilario Altobelli, from Vero- 3 paruit nubecula”. na and an anonymous physicist of Cosenza, After a few days of overcast sky, he ob- in Calabria, before being seen the next day in served anew each night from 4-10 December. Prague by Jan Brunowski.4 And that’s it. Reference to the nebula would It is evident that it was the advent of tele- not return again, not in his observations nor scopes which ushered in the first great period in his correspondence to attract the attention of astronomy in which Peiresc practiced. This of other observers. Three small turns and then period lasted two years. In 1611, he performed it was gone. the first observation of a full rotation of Mer- At some point the discovery of this nebula cury on March 1, and of Venus on September was assigned to Huyghens, then, at the discre- 21. tion of research, to Cysat in Ingolstadt in 1618. This painstaking interest fell away at the It wasn’t until the year 1916 and the work of end of the year in 1612 after observing sun- William Bigourdan that the first discoverer of spots, both because of his professional invest- this famous nebula was finally identified. ment and of his recurrent ill health. He was in- There is a critical trait that characterizes terested, of course, in the Great Comet of 1618, the work of Peiresc: an unquenchable thirst but did not follow its progress. Top: Engraving of Peiresc by An- for knowledge that drove him to ceaselessly In 1628, Peiresc seemed to reinvest himself thony Van Dyck, print by Johannes look for new information on all subjects. Even in the telescope, watching the lunar eclipse of Vorsterman. Below: Statue of when he worked with Gassendi in the 1630s, Peiresc, Aix-en-Provence, pho- January 20, which allowed him to determine he did not appear to discuss this nebula which to by Georges Seguin. Wikimedia the difference in longitude between Aix and Commons. had intrigued him for a few nights in Decem- the capital. But the plague raging in Aix sent ber 1610. him into exile for three years in Belgentier, be- 3 ”The sky was so clear it was not a cloud in the Ori- on was clear that the two stars can hardly be dis- 4 A student of Kepler, who followed it himself reg- tinguished. At the end of the star appeared in the ularly from the 17th of October, all the while being cloud.” hindered by adverse weather conditions.

12 Planetarian June 2012 tween 1629 and 1632, and it was in the 1630s that his meeting with the astronomer Pierre Gassendi truly returned him to an intense practice of astronomical observation. During his stay at Aix, Peiresc accommo- dated in his Callas hotel an enlarged window to facilitate observations. This hotel, replaced during the revolution by the current Palace of Justice, became the seat of intense activity for a few years.

Cartographer of the Earth, moon Regarded so lowly, Peiresc remains a visionary by way of thought. The thing that most interested him was using the eclipse of the moon to refine the longitudes of his maps. As early as 1610, anticipating interest in the workings of the satellites of Jupi- ter, he had undertaken the task of drawing up their tables, estimating their revolution times (more precisely than that of Galileo in the case of the fourth satellite) and their positions in their orbits. In the absence of having considered (not more than Galileo) to use this method to its maximum of precision using eclipses of the satellites, he eventually Early map of the moon engraved by Claude Mellan, had to admit defeat by inadequate re- shown to the right. Above is Pierre Gassendi. Wiki- media Commons. sults for the longitudes and did not pub- lish his tables. They were, nevertheless, useful to Wendelin, a Flemish astronomer, then established at Forcalquier, to ensure that these satellites were within the laws of Kepler. Some 20 years later, he made a return to the Nebula or comet? classic method of eclipses of the moon. After When you know that neither Galileo nor the principal astronomers of the time had not the observation of the lunar eclipse on March seen the Orion Nebula, doubts can be expressed about the authenticity of the observation 1, 1634 and the passage of the solar eclipse of of Peiresc in 1610, which was, after all the publication year of Sidereus Nuncius. March 3, 1635, he became a forerunner of sci- Two facts can be citied: the limited perspective of the first glasses, and the fact that entific methodology by initiating the idea of Peiresc only record eight observations in his collection in the space of two weeks between a network of simultaneous observations of November 26 and December 10, 1610. the lunar eclipse on August 28, 1635 in order The idea that immediately comes to mind is to imagine he saw a bright comet (which, to map the Mediterranean basin. by the way, does not diminish his achievement; he then would have been the first discov- Centralizing the observations collected, he erer of a telescopic comet). This would be consistent with such a limited set of observations was driven to shrink the dimensions of Ptole- over time, including the fact that, for a “more serene sky” on December 1 and 3, Peiresc did my, at that time accepted to be about a thou- not find his “nubecula,” which he observed in a November 26 sky “not completely calm.” sand kilometers. One can also mention the fact that Peiresc, who begins to mention Latin for “no” (prob- The impact of these mapping applications ably “nebulosa”), scratched his words and preferred the cautious “nubecula,” which still of astronomical observations is, without leaves room for doubt. doubt, the greatest contribution of the work But Peiresc was an astute observer. We saw it first when he observed the supernova Ké- Peiresc. Through this practice in networking, plet in 1604, and traced it during his “watching” the sky with the naked eye for those years. the concept of useful science emerges, which He witnessed the passage of the great comet of 1607, observed 75 years later by Edmund will take several decades more before the cre- Halley. ation of Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Chaires de Presumably he would have used then the word “comet” if he detected any movement. Mathématiques et d’Hydrographie (chairs of He also writes in its latest statement the “little cloud” between the same two stars, “as usu- mathematics and hydrography), driven by al,” which indicates lack of movement. the commercial, maritime and military inter- The fact that he interrupted his remarks on December 10 does not mean that the object ests for the kingdom. disappeared, but that his curiosity was focused elsewhere, in agreement with his wide vari- Only noting the moments of contact be- ety of interests. The fact that the Orion Nebula is bright in this region and was observed a tween the shadow of the Earth with the edges few years later, in 1618 by Cysat in these early years of optical astronomy, tends to support of our satellite still contained a margin of un- the discovery of Peiresc from 1610 . I certainty, and in order to refine the method, Peiresc planned to equip the observers with a common map representing lunar formations,

June 2012 Planetarian 13 allowing the observers to monitor the prog- In the end, the personality of Peiresc is fas- Copy the Italian correspondence of Peiresc Sé- ress of the shadow and to increase their com- cinating. Here was an innovative spirit, on the guier: parisons with the help of major craters. lookout to advance science even if he some- Bibliothèque Méjanes, in Aix-en-Provence Thus, he was naturally inclined to under- times drowned in some of the beliefs still in (Mss 201 (1019) to 215 (1033) take creating the first map of the moon, estab- power at the time. National Library of France, Paris: lished with Gassendi and drawn with stiffness He pioneered in the process of understand- (New Acquisitions French 5168, 5169, 5170, by the painter Claude Mellan. As early as 1634, ing, experimenting with an approach which 5171, 5172, 5173 and 5174) inconclusive tests had been carried out with combined observations followed by interpre- Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence: Manoscritti two painters, Mathieu Fredeau and Claude tations. Galileiani. Sauvé. But in the summer 1636 the project ma- And yet, often, for example with the dis- Works and biographical articles on Peiresc: terialized when they accepted Mellan for the covery of the Orion nebula in astronomy or Gassendi, Pierre: Vita Peireski, 1641. task. the determination of longitude by the meth- Humbert, Pierre: An amateur Peiresc. Paris, Gassendi used one of his long telescopes od of Jupiter’s moons in cartography, he did Desclée de Brower, 1933 given to him by Hevelius, and Peiresc, his not improve the fields of study to which he Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637) best telescope given to him by Galileo. They contributed. humanist and learned, his family and his placed themselves with Mellan at the top of If the personality of the intellectual is stud- friends. Exhibition of the Musée Comtadin, the Sainte-Victoire Mountain, near Aix. ied more and more by historians of science as Carpentras, 1981 During several nights, between September a component of the discovery, the thing one Georgelin, Yvon, Arzano, Simone: scholars in 24 and November 7, 1636, they created many could call “hyper-curiosity” permanently put Provence, Peiresc and Gassendi. astrono- drawings of the moon. Mellan etched on the breaks on the potential developments of mers 121° societies Savantes, Nice Congress, bronze three lunar maps, one of the first quar- his contributions and would help clarify the 1996. ter (which was particularly successful), one of silence which seems to surround some of his In the footsteps of Cassini, CTHS, 2001, pp. 311- the last quarter, and one of the full moon, re- major discoveries. I 329. producing the relief (small craters, large cra- Documentation on the Internet: ters, mountains and seas), with excellent con- Bibliography Friends of Peiresc, 19 rue Peiresc 83210 Belgen- trast of the shadows and contours. Manuscript sources: tier, www.lesamisdepeiresc.fr The main Fund is kept in the library Inguim- Village of Peyresq, home of humanism, ASBL Projects left unfinished bertine of Carpentras: Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc rue Royale Peiresc died in Aix of tuberculosis at the Fund Simiane-Peiresc (mss 1768 à 1886) ainsi 326 B-1030 Brussels, www.peiresc.org age of 56 on June 24, 1637 and the lunar atlas que plusieurs pièces isolées dans divers reg- Musée Paul Arbaud - Iconography peireski- project remained unfinished. All things con- istres (particulièrement mss 10, 17, 439, 440, enne: sidered, even up to the end, he had not been 531, 640, 847, 1255, 1722,1723) www.e-corpus.org/fre/virtualcollections/ interested in describing the moon because Discovery of the Orion Nebula: mss 1803, Peiresc/notices/9185-portraits-de-Nicolas- thereafter he was more interested in the meth- FOLS. 189 Claude-Fabri-Peiresc-1580-1637-et-iconogra- ods of eclipses of Jupiter’s moon, which would Library of Nîmes, square of Art: No. 131 (13812). phie-peireskienne.html be necessary to determine longitudes. The question of latitudes concerned him as well, in particular helping Gassendi to recon- struct the Pythéas of Marseille gnomon experience in the same year (1636) to determine the meridian height of the sun at the summer Honoring Monsieur Peiresc solstice. A crater of the moon is the greatest tribute of the astronomical community to the work Attitude to the Galileo case of Peiresc, an initiative of the International Astronomical Union, which is even more ap- In 1633, after the second trial that led to propriate considering that he initiated the first map of the moon. Galileo’s recanting, Peiresc first adopted a cau- With regard to the written legacy, significant for its decades of activity, it has remained tious reserve, along with almost all of his con- conserved through the 119 Peiresc Fund records at the library of Carpentras, in all more temporaries, simply to maintain a friendly than 50,000 papers. There are also 14 volumes in Aix and as much at the National Library correspondence with Galileo. of France. However, in 1635, as a committed support- The Paul Arbaud Museum of Aix-en-Provence maintains a gallery of portraits and er of the Copernican system and after newly peireskienne iconography. acquiring success in his enterprise of making In terms of heritage, the Planetarium of Aix-en-Provence is also dedicated to him. From revisions to the maps of the Mediterranean, Belgentier, the association Friends of Peiresc showcases the history of his ancient family he boldly interceded in his correspondence estate. with Cardinal Barberini, nephew of Pope Ur- Finally, the village of Peyresq, in the Alpes of Haute Provence, which had 228 inhabit- ban VIII, and Librarian of the Vatican, in favor ants at the time of Peiresc, has been rebuilt by care of the Belgian association Pro-Peiresc, of a pardon “for the consolation of an ill man gathered around pioneer Georges Lambeau and Toine Smets in 1954. in his seventies, of whom the memory will be Given to Madame Smets-Hennekinne, president of the Foundation Nicolas-Claude Fab- difficult to erase from posterity... for the won- ri de Peiresc, European foundation for culture and artistic and scientific humanism, it was derful discoveries he made in the sky.” a prized masterpiece which crowned the rebuilding in 1980, the year of the fourth centen- The approach was not a crowning success, nial of his birth. but it has the merit of being clear, at a time This Provençal hamlet of the high Verdon is today a university town which organizes when, faced with the yoke of the inquisition, international scientific meetings and publishes work on cosmology, quantum mechanics, the scholars of Europe were often silent. ecology, French civilization, and the history of science. I

14 Planetarian June 2012 L!! LLL L!! CECE LLL LL!! CECE CECELL

June 2012 Planetarian 15 Makeover of India’s Jawahar Planetarium

PP2 - Left: Pramod Pande (director) and Piyush Pande

Piyush Pandey, Administrator Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund Anand Bhawan, Allahabad, India Jawahar Planetarium [email protected]

Allahabad is the Hindu historic holy city. is today a museum that contains the memora- premises and Indira Gandhi, the then prime It is located at the confluence of three rivers: bilia of the Nehru-Gandhi family, India’s free- minister of India herself, inaugurated it on Ganga (the Ganges), Yamuna and Saraswati dom movement, and more. 29 November 1980. It was equipped with Carl (now invisible). It also is the ancestral abode Nehru was a scholar, author, visionary and Zeiss ZKP-II model projector. of the Nehrus. The house where they lived is the architect of modern India. He was famous This author was the planetarium’s found- named Anand Bhawan (means a house full for his concern for “scientific temper.” If Neh- ing director. He and his team designed Au- of bliss). Motilal Nehru and his barrister son ru travelled abroad as prime minister and his tostar, a digital automation system, for this Jawaharlal Nehru were freedom fighters and young daughter Indira was with him, they equipment in 1983. This controlled all the the latter became the first prime minister of would always spare time to visit a planetari- functions of the ZKP-II as well as the auxilia- free India (1947-1964). um if the city they visited had one. ry slide and special effect projectors. The Auto- After the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, his In the year 1980, the Jawahar Planetari- star worked flawlessly for 29 years until it was daughter, Indira Gandhi, dedicated Anand um was built in removed this February, when Bhawan to the nation in 1970. Anand Bhawan Anand Bhawan the planetarium was getting ready for makeover. Major changes took place: the mosaic floor of planetarium was replaced with vit- reous tiles, new comfortable seats replaced the old fiber- glass moulded chairs, the entire building and projection dome were repainted, old exhibits were replaced by large format digital prints and, most impor- tantly, the ZKP-II was bid adieu; its place now occupied by Ev- ans & Sutherland’s SP2HDQ Di- gistar4 System with two projectors for its 8-m dome. The renovated Jawahar Planetarium was inaugurated by Mr. Jairam Ramesh, a trustee of the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund and minister of government of India. The planetarium is currently showing Cosmic Safari by E&S, which is running at near full-house Abode of Nehrus and Gandhis; a closer look at the inscription on the stone. All images by Piyush Pan- (7 shows a day, 6 days a week with a seat- dey/Suroor Fatima. ing capacity of 96). I

16 Planetarian June 2012 Left, from top: Minister Jairam Ramesh inaugurating the renovated planetarium (30 March 2012); planetarium staff posing against a new exhibit; recent addition: PSLV rocket model gifted by Indian Space Research Organisation; and senior technician Mr. Munnilal at the new D4 console. Above: dismantling operation of the faithful ZKP-II projector.

Indian planetariums honor Nehru in their names Indian Planetarium Names: Nehru is remembered for his charis- matic personality. Though Nehru himself was an agnostic atheist, he continues to be worshipped like a god. There are scores of hospi- tals, research institutes, roads (almost every major city has a Jawa- harlal Nehru Road) and government programs after his name. There also are four planetariums bearing some part of his name: Jawahar Planetarium, Allahabad; Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bangalore; Nehru Planetarium, Mumbai; and Nehru Planetarium, New Delhi. Even his daughter Indira has three planetariums bearing her name: Indira Gandhi Planetarium, Lucknow; Indira Gandhi Plan- etarium, Patna; and Priyadarshini Planetarium, Thiruvanantha- puram (Indira was fondly called Priyadarshini, the word means “a lady having nice looks”). Then there are five planetariums after the Indian business clan the Birlas. They are B. M. Birla Planetarium, Chennai; B. M. Birla Planetarium, Hyderabad, Birla Planetarium, Coimbatore; B. M. Birla Planetarium, Jaipur; and M. P. Birla Planetarium, Kolkata. I

June 2012 Planetarian 17 Magic of the otherworld

Photo courtesy Mediendom

Gentle harp under the dome

By Christine Högl leading to mountains, The otherworld is a mystical place in my- forests, streams, and thology. It evokes legendary tales of a myste- lakes, a mystical coast- rious world of kings, wizards, elves and myth- line, and the quiet ex- ical creatures. The otherworld is located in the panse of the cosmos. Playing “in the green” for projection in the dome. Photo provided by hills, islands, and water springs in forests. Peo- In this gently-mov- author. ple gain access only under specific conditions. ing scenery, the harp The otherworld is also present in our mod- music invited the audi- ern times , but today we have different names ence to immerse themselves in another world. North Docks is working with Mediendom on for it: it is our vision, our life’s dreams, it our “For me, this project is an example of how a number of projects. imagination; it is the other, mostly hidden, re- the new digital domes make a contribution With this production the Mediendom is ality. to culture that is possible only in domes,” said breaking new ground. Rock or pop music And, today, the otherworld can be found in Mediendom Manager Edward Thomas. “On events in the new fulldome technology have the planetarium. the flat screen, this production would not already been shown throughout the world. Finding the otherworld has been accompa- work.” Visual accompaniment to harp music at 360 nied by Christine Högl with the Celtic harp “Harp music touches our heart’s delight, degrees, until now, did not exist. for decades. The musician has gained a repu- the sky in us,” said Christine Högl. “The sub- In addition to North Docks, Mediendom tation for her art through projects such as live tle sounds help us to find an inner balance. and the artist, the company harpArt from multimedia concerts in planetariums, open- In conjunction with the fulldome projection Lauterbach also collaborated. The project was air concerts in the gardens, and the series screen and a starry sky, there is a unique ex- funded by the Fördesparkasse Kiel, the Friends “Music of Silence” in churches. For her com- perience. “ of the Planetarium Kiel Association, and the positions, she has received international rec- Joachim Perschbacher, manager of the pro- city of Kiel. It is the world’s first production of ognition. duction company North Docks, said “This a “fulldome film” to harp music and will also At Mediendom, located at the University of project with high-end 3D animation and be distributed internationally by the Univer- Applied Sciences in Keil, German, the multi- green screen filming pushed us in every re- sity of Applied Sciences-Kiel. media project “Magic of the Otherworld” in- spect to the boundaries of technology. With For more information: vited the audience into virtual landscapes great team work and many night shifts, we www.mediendom.de, that were created in collaboration with the were able to achieve a result that we as a pro- www.northdocks.com, artist especially for this production: a cave duction company proudly use as a reference.” www.christinehoegl.com. I

18 Planetarian June 2012 BlackHoles_FullPageAd_04-25-2012.pdf 1 4/25/2012 3:12:36 PM

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June 2012 Planetarian 19 Celebrating fulldome with creativity and spirit: Six years of the Jena FullDome Festival

By Volkmar Schorcht Carl Zeiss, Planetarium Division 07740 Jena, Germany [email protected]

2012 saw the sixth edition of the FullDome as of the Mediendom of the University of Ap- Festival in Jena, Germany. plied Sciences in Kiel, and Prof. Tom Duscher It’s no coincidence that also six years ago, of the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and when Micky Remann, lecturer at Weimar’s Design in Kiel, in conceiving the Festival. Bauhaus University, heard that the Zeiss Plan- etarium in Jena, a mere 15 miles from Wei- The festival is born The Jena FullDome Festival thus originated in the joint, collaborative curiosity about yet undeveloped medial components of a dome full of projected imagery. The first, still informal festival in 2007 offered enthusiastic students a platform for their unconventional, if not sensational, short films. Weimar’s students, interacting with young cinéasts of Hessian universities and stu- Carl Zeiss lends support dents at the Mediendom in Kiel, jointly set Fascinated by the outstanding ideas and, in out to conquer the dome. They not only chal- many cases, professional results, the author of lenged visual experience, but also tried out this report won Carl Zeiss to become a spon- the impact of the interplay of sound effects sor of the FullDome Festival. Since 2008, Carl with 360-degree projection. Zeiss has annually donated three endowed Creative and decidedly uncommitted to prizes for student productions in three cate- any directions, the young artists present- gories: a “Creative Award” for the best idea, a ed collages, two- and three-dimensional an- “Performance Award” for the best realization imated cartoons, movie compositions and (both selected by a jury of experts), and an time-lapse pictures. A breath of fresh air was “Audience Award,” whose winner is picked by blowing through Jena’s tradition-steeped viewers’ ballot at the Festival Gala event. Micky Reman of Bauhaus University, Master of the FullDome Festival. Photo by Volkmar planetarium arena, whose visitors had never In 2009, the Bauhaus, the classical design Schorcht seen anything like it. creation and training center of Modernity, The success of the first festival called for a celebrated the 90th anniversary of its foun- mar, had leading-edge technology permitting repetition in the following year. Student par- dation in Weimar. It was a matter of course the projection of dome-filling still pictures ticipants of the pioneering event aided the for Weimar’s Bauhaus University to take part and videos, he encouraged his students to ex- new freshmen. A small—but committed— in the festivities, and a welcome occasion to plore the new medium. The hurdles to be tak- community of fulldome freaks delved ever give that year’s Festival the thematic subtitle en were not only technical; the esthetics of more deeply into the potentials of the new “Bauhaus in the Stars.” The works and visions space-filling imagery was just as exciting an is- medium. The contributions to the 2008 Festi- of Bauhaus artists such as Kandinsky, Klee and sue as the debate about suitable contents. val scintillated with no less vitality, wit, and Moholy-Nagy inspired the young generation The kind of imagery befitting the plane- eagerness to experiment and courage to go of the 21st century. Grants from the State of tarium had achieved a certain level of ma- new ways than the first clips shown the year Thuringia permitted the offering of extra priz- turity, but artistic, cinematic or documenta- before. es for the best entries on the Bauhaus theme. ry approaches were still in their infancy. The The young artists had broken fresh ground, students involved needed a dome, of course, in which the tender saplings planted in the Taking the innovative lead to see and judge their results—and from that first year grew into young trees with many By the third year of its existence, the Full- need began the idea of the Festival. branches, which is to say that the new medi- Dome Festival had established itself as the Remann joined hands with Jürgen Hellwig, um developed many facets. Spontaneous ap- leading forum of discourse about the young the director of the Jena Planetarium, and in- proaches matured into expertise; the pleasure and innovative medium and elicited world- volved Prof. Rotraut Pape of the Offenbach of trying was followed by conception-based, wide response and participation. The students University of Art and Design, Eduard Thom- methodical work. had mastered the conceptual, technical and

20 Planetarian June 2012 esthetic challenges in a quality comparable to that of the professionals among the festival entrants. The results presented on the dome to the guests at the Festival Gala hardly allowed them to distinguish student contributions from professional entries any more. As crowning proof of the students’ outstanding work, a number of their fulldome clips received the coveted “Domie Awards” at the 2009 Domefest. The FullDome Festival left its traces. The tracks of the first fulldome enthusiasts were followed by students of other universities. The international fulldome world took notice of the event. The festival organizers got into contact with Dave Beining, the initiator of DomeFest in the USA. The first foreign entries to the Jena festival were those by Hue Walker and students of the ARTS Lab of the Universi- ty of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Fulldome growth aids competition Putz from Marc Rühl, a finalist at the 6th FullDome Festival in Jena. Photo by author. The number of commercial fulldome shows created for planetariums rapidly in- creased now, together with the desire to present new productions to the public at large. In The 2012 Jena FullDome Festival Awards coordination with the Immersive Film Festi- Creative Award, voted by the FullDome Festival jury, 500 euros, donated by Carl Zeiss AG, val in Espinho, Portugal, the 2010 FullDome Planetarium Division: Rose Generazio, Ringling College of Art and Design, Florida for Festival was the first to be open to full-length Pressure feature shows, scheduled since to be public- Performance Award, chosen by the FullDome Festival jury, 500 euros, donated by Carl ly presented in Espinho every odd-numbered, Zeiss AG, Planetarium Division: Sönke Hahn, Bauhaus University Weimar for breakFAST and in Jena every even-numbered year. Audience Award, chosen by the audience of the Festival Gala, 500 euros, donated by Carl The 4th Festival met with overwhelming Zeiss AG, Planetarium Division: Sebastian Hilgetag and Marie Havemann, FH Potsdam public response, drawing more than a thou- for Listen Carefully sand spectators to the boundless fulldome Dissolving Space Award, proposed by the festival organization, endowed with 500 euros, world—a record attendance, presumably even donated by Sky-Skan: Sebastian Hilgetag and Marie Havemann, FH Potsdam for Listen on a global scale. Jena, the site of the world’s Carefully oldest large-dome planetarium, once again Directors Award, donated by the festival organization, endowed with 100 euros: Jiayao was the venue, expert forum and marketplace Chen and Jie Wang, Bauhaus University Weimar for Blue of the international fulldome scene. During five days, the festival visitors wit- Honorable Mentions for outstanding and innovative fulldome productions nessed 75 productions, including world pre- I. Honorable Mentions were awarded for non-student works, chosen by the festival orga- mières, from China, Canada, Australia, the nization: USA, Portugal, Germany, and many more Buy the ticket ... for immersing the audience into caleidoscopic realms as a meditation on countries. perception and velocity, by L.F. Jones and C. Cumbie-Jones, Ringling College of Art and The interest among people engaged in mov- Design, Florida ie making, 3D animation and media art was Carl Zeiss Vision for the World for probing the fulldome medium for corporate image pre- as high as ever. The Festival left no room for sentations, from visuarte-mediale Erlebniswelten, Munich doubt that the medium is advancing. Still a Chaos and Order for excellence in object animation for the fulldome virtual space, by Roc- niche in the big media world, fulldome is get- co Helmchen and John Kraas, Bottrop ting increasingly attractive to scientists, artists The Doors of Perception for pioneering interplay of word-sculptures and sound sculptures and movie makers. in 360 degrees, by Ralph Heinsohn & divers sound environments, Hamburg /Berlin While the FullDome Festival cannot deter- Inner Voices for connecting emotional and subconcious worlds with dome visualizations, mine definitely where the development will by Martin Kusch lead to, it can point out feasible ways and Linear dome for the choreography of graphics and sound in a dialogue-of-plane and hemi- make new trends, themes and techniques vis- sphere, Daniel Bandke and Lukas Taido Velvet ible. The Sun Warrior for creative combination of painting, animation and story telling, Hannes Friday night, as usual, was reserved as “Stu- Wagner, Weimar dent’s Night,” a highlight of each FullDome 6th FullDome Festival teaser for effective use of audio and animation to create a vivid an- Festival. Accompanied by ahs! and wows!, it ticipation of the festival theme Dissolving Space, by Jin Yunshui, Hannes Wagner, An- offered fulldome content of another kind. dré Wünscher, and Samuel Klemke While old-school planetarians may possibly (Continues on Page 32) (Continues on Page 32)

June 2012 Planetarian 21 WPD: A database for planetariums across the world

Daniel Audeon Planetarium of Nantes–France If you need to look for a planetarium, either www.aplf-planetariums.info/en its location or information about it, look no [email protected] further than the Worldwide Planetarium Da- tabase: www.aplf-planetariums.info/en. On the website of the Association of French- Language Planetariums, APLF, we decided to MSQL database and I filled all fields. tem or hybrid, what sort of star projector and list all planetariums around the world in a free At the bottom of each page, you can click which model, how many video projectors, res- database that contained information about on my e-mail and send me photos, make olution, fulldome or not, what kind of dome, all planetariums and was accessible to every- corrections to information, share news, an- sound and all sort of other useful information. one. nounce changes, or add a new planetarium. There are several ways to use the database. Lionel Ruiz (Marseille’s Planetarium) built a It’s very important to add photos because, From the APLF home page, you can click di- even with only one photo inside the dome, rectly on the world map to choose a con- you can see if it’s tilted or not, oriented or con- tinent, and then choose the planetarium centric seats, if there is a star ball at the cen- from the country list. In addition to Google ter, and more. maps, you also can download the kmz file for Of course, the exact location is important, Google Earth. so on each page about each planetarium we A “query” option also is available on the have included a Google maps, and, if you home page. You can query by size, by num- click on the geographic coordinates, you can ber of seats, by builder, by type (optical, digi- open automatically Google Earth and find the tal, hybrid, stereoscopic), video projector, and dome. by country. There is a complete page for each planetari- Do not hesitate to send me photos, informa- um, where you can find all about the dome di- tion or changes about your planetarium. Lat- ameter, number of seats, optical or digital sys- er, you can probably update yourself. I

The United States map from the Worldwide Planetarium Database; Inset: The page for the Irene Pennington Planetarium at the Louisiana Arts & Science Museum in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, site of the 2012 IPS Conference. Images provided by author.

22 Planetarian June 2012 June 2012 Planetarian 23 There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. Introduction to The Outer Limits,* circa 1960s

Jeff Bowen Bowen Technovation 7999 E. 88th St. Indianapolis, Indiana 46256 [email protected]

pect the technology to be off all their product that will automatically turn off the compo- The sun is setting on VGA lines by 2015. These computer video outputs nent, composite, VGA and S-video outputs on Do you ever show Blu-ray discs in your will be replaced by HDMI and DisplayPort. December 31, 2013. This is in response to copy- planetarium? DVDs? NASA select? Other HD Translation: You next computer or DVD/ right protection requirements that all man- programs? PowerPoints? Computer graphics Blu-ray player will probably not have a VGA ufacturers must adhere to. That means they and computer-based lessons? connection. will only output HDMI or another digital for- News Flash: December 8, 2010. AMD, Dell, News Flash: December 31, 2013. AACS mat, basically HDMI, DisplayPort or, in very Intel Corporation, Lenovo, Samsung Elec- (Advanced Access Content System) Adopter rare cases, DVI. tronics LCD and LG Display have come to an Agreement of June 2009: 2.2.2.1 Analog Sun- (For more information about AACS, go to agreement to phase out computer RGBHV set–2010. All Blu-ray players, HDTV tuners, www.aacsla.com.) (VGA) connections beginning in 2013 and ex- etc. have utilities burned into their chipset Translation: This simply means the end of higher resolution component video and S The Outer Limits is an American television series that aired from 1963 to 1965 that featured science fiction. The video in your dome. Not just on the comput- “there is nothing wrong with your television” has become an iconic catchphrase.

24 Planetarian June 2012 Video Type Future? Distance Female Connector Male Connector Audio Limitation (per official specification)

RGBHV Obsolete Now 1.8 meters Not on this (VGA) or 6-feet cable. Run separate cable and connector.

DVI Industry Plans 1.8 meters Not on this Obsoletion or 6-feet cable. Run separate of this ASAP cable and connector.

Display A hot tick- 15 meters Stereo, 5.1, 7.1 Port et. Not much or 49-feet audio support- signal chain ed on one cable support at and connector. this time

HDMI The hottest 9.1 meters Stereo, 5.1, 7.1 ticket at this or 30-feet audio support- time. Tons ed on one cable of hardware and connector. available

er, but also soon on the switchers, scalers, pro- cember 31, 2013. the video file or burned the disc yourself—it jectors, etc. Next, you will be tempted to purchase a lit- still won’t play back. This is a function of the Yup…it is true. Recently two of us at Bowen tle adapter to convert your HDMI/DP port to hardware, not the media. Your computer will Technovation were among 60 national sys- VGA. probably output computer graphics through tem designers invited to a full-day workshop Oops! Won’t work. The reason is HDCP1, HDMI/DP fine until you put in a disc of any on this topic in Chicago, Illinois. Manufactur- which is federally-mandated legal copy pro- sort. ers have moved very fast to address this, and tection. If an HDMI/DP device does not see an Problem B. You want to use your cool-o already we are seeing the elimination of a lot HDCP-equipped receiving device that “hand- new all-dome projection system for your aux- of hardware that you may currently be using. shakes” and says “I, too, am HDCP equipped iliary computer/HDTV/video sources. We first discussed this in workshops at GLPA (compliant),” then the screen will just go Well, first off, very few of these systems 2010, MAPS 2011, SEPA 2011 and GLPA 2011, blank. have an external video input of any sort. The and now we’re sharing it across the globe. This means every device in your video sig- ones that do might only give you a poor qual- The following report is a little oversimpli- nal path must handshake with HDCP. The ity composite or s-video input. Note that in fied for the purpose of brevity, but we have a minute any HDCP compliant device sees a de- our first paragraph we explained the disap- detailed PowerPoint available for download vice that is not compliant, then blanko. No pearance of these sources, and realize that on our web site at www.bowentechnova- video. their image quality is terrible. tion.com/planetarium/MAPS2011.htm. It has If you try to put a VGA-to-HDMI converter So maybe there is an HDMI input on your many more photos and much more informa- in front of the HDMI input on a projector or all-dome system. Is it HDCP compliant? tion than we can devote to this article. switcher, or if you try to put an HDMI-to-VGA The brightness and resolution of most all- converter in front of the HDMI input on the dome projection systems is far lower than you Into the lab projector, then same result. No picture. need for detailed instructional video such as Now that we understand the issues and the- Solution A. Make sure every video de- PowerPoint, HDTV, text, quizzes, etc. Suppose ories, let’s explore some real world case stud- vice in your signal chain is HDCP compliant. your use a 6K lumen projector with 1920 x ies. Please see the table for photos of various Computer, video server, DVD player, Blu-ray, 1080 pixels to project a 10-25 foot wide image connectors we will discuss. switcher, projector, even your computer mon- on your dome.2 Problem A. You purchased a new DVD play- itor! This is not difficult. You either just need The majority of all-dome projection sys- er, Blu-ray player, HDTV tuner, or computer. to talk with a professional who know what tems use this resolution or less to cover 50% Your new video device will have either works and what doesn’t, or you research it on or the entire dome. So, if you try to jam your digital HDMI or DataPort connections on it. your own. instructional video into the all-dome system, For the rest of this discussion I will call these Please note that web sites are often incor- you are giving up tremendous image and text HDMI/DP to save some page space. rect and that not all HDMI or DataPort devic- 2 Mark Trotter did really nice page on this subject in New DVD and Blu-ray players with VGA, S- es are HDCP compliant. the afore mentioned PowerPoint. One of his calcu- video and component outputs are practical- By the way, it doesn’t matter if you made lations is: all-dome HD Projector = 0.1M pixels deliv- ly not available in stores. Read the December ered on a 12-foot wide image in 40-foot dome = 1.1 K 31 “News Flash” above before you run out and 1 High-def Digital Content Protection, or HDCP; pro- pixels per ft2. Dedicated HD Projector = 2.3M pixels buy a bunch of the “remaining” players that tects copyright holders from illegal copying. Also delivered on a 12-foot wide image in 40-foot dome can keep discs you make yourself from being played. = 25.5K pixels per ft2. still have those outputs. They go dead on De-

June 2012 Planetarian 25 quality for classroom work, and, at the same you can have composite, S-video, component, or computer. time, you are putting precious hours on your VGA, and HDMI all converted up to HDMI Solution D. To fix this, match ALL the dis- expensive all-dome projection system servers, and “upscaled” to one output that perfectly play and signal chain resolutions to one com- projectors and lamps. matches the resolution of your projector or mon denominator. In this day and age, that is Solution B. Use a dedicated, less costly pro- display. usually 1920 x 1080. Don’t forget to make sure jector and video signal chain for classroom Problem D. You have a computer HDMI all the devices are HDCP compliant. applications. It probably can be even lower output split between a 1024 x 768 monitor on Another option is to install a “smart EDID” brightness that those really nice all-dome pro- your desk and your fabulous new expensive switcher. These units let you use different res- jectors, and you won’t be giving up the reso- 1920 x 1080 video projector. The image on the olutions and types of displays with various lution! projector will not go above 1024 x 768. If you types of sources. You can program the switch- Problem C. You have a document cam- unplug the desktop monitor the projector dis- er to accept and program for outputs various era with S-video, an old computer with only plays full resolution. What’s up? EDID source device information. The smart VGA, a Pioneer DVD player with component Enter EDID, or Extended Display Identifica- switcher does all the re-calculations and re- outputs. Do you need to order a dumpster? tion Data. EDID is automatically provided by communication between the devices. That’s not a bad idea and would allow you a display to describe its capabilities to a video source (com- In Conclusion? puter, DVD Well, we really need to discuss more. I think player, switch- another article in an upcoming issue could ad- er, etc.). It is dress the following: what enables •• Preventing loss of HDMI, DisplayPort and a modern de- HDMI video quality between the source vice to know and the display/projector. what kinds of •• When to use CAT5 or CAT6 cable; CAT 6 is monitors are not “better.” Video scource scaler connected to •• Dealing with and solving the distance lim- to properly modernize with the best video it, product type, refresh rate of the display, dis- itations illustrated in Table 1. These are real quality available, but this is not environmen- play size, luminance data, pixel count and as- and are serious. tally sound nor financially sensible. pect ratio data. It cannot be defeated. •• Routing and breaking out stereo, 5.1 and 7.1 Solution C. Add a video source converter or If you have multiple monitors connected audio streams from HDMI and DisplayPort. scaler/switcher. Here is how it works: to a source or even to a switcher, all the EDID •• And you did everything right, but still no Single source units are available that will info for any connected devices is read by all video. The problem might be the deep col- convert any of these video sources to an other devices, even if they are not the device or setting on your source machine. HDMI output and generate the HDCP compli- selected on the switcher. The system will “cor- Remember: you can go to www.bowen- ant handshake. Not all of these units add the rect” to the lowest resolution device in the technovation.com/planetarium/MAPS2011. HDCP data and thus become almost useless system. htm and download the PowerPoint I men- for the long term. This is a big deal in our exhibit work, where tioned earlier in the article. You can also A better solution is to use a floating scal- we might design an exhibit with a large 65- feel free to email or call for advice. I’ll be ing interface that supports all these formats inch display and small touch screen or multi- sure to include your questions and com- and even has switcher built in. On one box ple smaller displays driven by the same source ments in Part 2. I

Your Universe Fingertips can now walk virtually The Universe at Your Fingertips from the Astronomical Society vides something the book can’t: short instructional videos for key of the Pacific is a staple of planetarians who work with school activities and ideas. groups. It’s a marvelous collection of hands-on activities gleaned Happily, navigating the Fingertips disc is very easy. There’s a fa- from classrooms and planetariums across the nation. They’ve been miliar table of contents that actually looks like what it’s supposed tested in classroom situations, honed, and retested, and they work to be. The number of clicks it takes to reach your destination is to teach the particular aspect of astronomy that you’re trying to minimal. Click on Table of Contents, pick The Scale of the Solar teach. My personal copy, like all my heavily-used books, bears the System from Activities, and you find 11 lessons dealing with that marks of many lunches spent looking for just the right way to get topic. Let’s try Toilet Paper Solar System; you go to a pdf document the idea of the solar system’s scale across that opens in a new window and are greeted with the familiar pa- to second graders, for example. per version of the Fingertips print edition. My newest copy won’t suf- When you close the tab, you’re back to the table of contents. No fer the lunch fate, however. It’s backtracking or multi-click navigation needed. Neat. on DVD-ROM. The newest re- You can see activities by topic and by setting and/or skill lev- lease of The Universe at Your el, and also find a nice set of general background information in Fingertips, version 2.0, has all astronomy to catch yourself up, or share with a teacher. There’s of the tried-and-true activi- also an extra: background information on teaching and learning ties, plus more, neatly pack- astronomy, which contains a number of articles from well-known aged on a disc that takes up a names in the astronomy education field. lot less bookshelf space and is as It’s well worth the $29.95 non-member price from the ASP’s Astro- easy to use as opening your favor- Shop (go to www.astrosociety.org), even though I will miss being able ite browser. In addition, the disc pro- to take my work to lunch with me. —Sharon Shanks

26 Planetarian June 2012 Discover the Legend Written in the Stars...

Narrated by Terry O’Quinn

A New Fulldome Show From Evans & Sutherland Digital Theater Productions and the eugenides foundation planetarium

June 2012 Planetarian www.es.comDigital Theater27 [email protected] How we do it Tips and tricks to share

Adam Thanz were printed out in one building for the en- to the hard drive Adam2TBtemp1. “/VT_ Planetarium Director tire campus. Results could take a day to almost Renders_A/images” represents the hierarchy Bays Mountain Planetarium a week if it was near the end of the semester. of folders to point toward. So, you’ll be chang- 853 Bays Mountain Park Road Before that, instead of a fancy terminal with ing your directory so that you are in the fold- Kingsport, TN 37660 [email protected] a monitor that displayed green text, we used er “images.” www.baysmountain.com punch card readers to input our software and Once you are in your folder, type “ls” (not data—but that’s a different story. the quotes). This will list all the files in that For modern computers, the Terminal pro- folder. This is not necessary for performing Resizing large numbers of images gram accesses the main processors of the com- the project, but something worth learning. to any type easily and quickly puter that is sitting on your desk. You can To change the size of an image, or to save it have many Terminal windows open at the to a different type of image, the command is I’m glad Editor Sharon Shanks started this same time, each processing at the same time. “sips.” This is an example of a command line: column for the IPS journal. As she has said, I This is possible since modern computers sips -s format png --resampleWidth am not the only author for this article. It in- have more than one processor. MacPros, due 2048 *.png -o /Volumes/Adam2TB- cludes all of you. Please submit an article to to their special processor chips, are also capa- temp1/VT_Renders_A/images_new help share. It can be a neat technique to do a ble of doubling the effective processors than Let’s look at what each part of this com- task. Or, how you made a prop to demonstrate are installed. mand to understand what is happening: a concept to school groups and the general au- So, I use an 8-core MacPro, but it operates “sips”—the program you are accessing. dience. It can be about an unusual workshop like a 16-core computer. If you have the RAM, “-s format” —the desired format. tool that made a project of yours so much easi- it’s like having a 16-processor render farm on “png”–the actual format type. This could be er to complete. Planetarians are extremely cre- your desk. jpeg, tiff, and many others. ative and resourceful. Share and enjoy! Once Terminal is open, you are accessing “--resampleWidth 2048”—the new width. If This article will look at a way of resizing Unix and thus need to know how to input you don’t set a height, then it will size propor- a large number of images easily and quick- commands. I know very little about Unix, but tionally. This resizing will occur regardless of ly. This came about when having to resize a I do know enough to do some basic tasks. First, the original image size. It can be a small image frame sequence quickly for a fulldome show. to simplify, you need to change directories so resized up or a large image sized down. A 30-minute show, at 30 frames a second, will that you are pointing to the correct folder in “*.png”—sets the processing to work on any contain 54,000 frames. If they’ve been mas- which your images are placed. That is done by file in the source folder with the png exten- tered at 4K (4096x4096 pixels), scaling them typing: sion. down can be a task. cd /Volumes/Adam2TBtemp1/ “-o /Volumes/Adam2TBtemp1/VT_Renders You could use Photoshop, but that is not VT_Renders_A/images _A/images_new”—sets the output hard drive fast at all. If you use a Mac or Linux, you can cd means “change directory.” “/Volumes/ and folder to be where the newly resized im- use sips. An acronym for Scilab Image Process- Adam2TBtemp1” represents the hard drive to ages get saved. Be aware, if you do not save the ing toolbox, it is a command used in Unix, change your directory to, in this case change new files to a different folder, then it will over- which is the basis of write the original files! these operating systems. Now that you un- Since I use a Mac, the fol- derstand the command lowing will be in refer- and how powerful it is, ence to Macs. how can you really in- To access the Unix increase the speed of the terface, open Terminal. job? The key was men- Some of you may not tioned earlier in this arti- be old enough to know cle. The more processors that computer systems you have available, the of the past consisted of a more you can divide the mainframe that took up job up to be even faster. an entire floor of a build- So, if you have a dual- ing and there were many core Mac of any sort, you terminals that could be can split up your fold- used to access the main- er in two with half the frame. The mainframe’s frames in each. Then, set purpose was to take up two Terminal win- these input programs in dows looking the differ- order, process them, and ent folders, and run sips. then output the results If you have an 8-core in a central place. MacPro operating like a My memories at the 16-core, then divide up University of Flori- your frames to up to 16 da were that the results Here’s a screen shot of the terminal window showing the sips command and the resultant pro- folders. cesses.

28 Planetarian June 2012 How did life on Earth begin? This tantalizing question forms the basis of the Morrison Planetarium’s most recent production, Life: A Cosmic Story. Narrated by Academy Award winner Jodie Foster, the show launches the audience on a journey through time, witnessing key events since the Big Bang that set the stage for life. Visualizations drive the narrative—from turbulent, star- and planet-forming giant molecular clouds to the microscopic activity of photosynthesis—in what the New York Times calls “a visually spectacular demonstration.” Named the 2011 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival’s Best Fulldome Program.

IMMERSE + ENGAGE Fulldome science storytelling from the california academy of sciences

FRAGILE PLANET Earth’s Place in the Universe

Travel 120 light years to rediscover home! Sigourney Weaver guides audiences on an immersive excursion that explores a Universe filled with the possibility of life. This visually rich program is grounded in observed data, with an evocative, multi-dimensional sound environment by renowned giant screen composer Michael Stearns. Develop a renewed appreciation for our fragile planet through the lens of astronomy.

For more information contact: Maral Papakhian 415 379 5127 [email protected]

For full-length previews of both shows visit: www.calacademy.org/domeshows username “d0mesh0ws”* June 2012 Planetarian password “m0rris0n”* 29 *use number "0" instead of letter "O." (How we do it, continued from Page 30) (President, continued from Page 8)

If you don’t know how many usable CPUs al size and/or image type. This is good if you many hats in the time that I have known you have available, open Activity Monitor want both a 2K and a 1K frame sequence from him, recently spent a month volunteering at and then select to view the floating CPU win- the same 4K master sequence. These processes the Ghana Planetarium. I’m sure that either dow (under Window on the Activity Monitor can be done at the same time. he or Jacob and Jane Ashong will be happy to Menu). Each CPU available will be shown and There are many other functions that can be tell you more about that experience if you vis- how much you are using them. In my work, it used within sips, like cropping to a dimension, it with them at the IPS conference. takes about 1.2 seconds to process each image. rotating, and more. Just look up “sips unix” Jacob and Jane are always looking for vol- That 54,000 frame sequence originally in online and you’ll find more details. unteers to come help them spread the “gospel 4K dimension can be resized, if using 16 sub- I hope this little foray into Unix lets you see of astronomy” in their friendly nation. sets, in about 1.125 hours. It doesn’t seem to that it isn’t so difficult to explore the many Another outreach example is the “Reach for matter to what dimension you are saving to; features of your computer, especially if it real- the Stars-Afghanistan” project that Christo- it takes just about the exact same time. ly helps you get a huge task done quickly and pher Phillips (Imiloa Planetarium) is doing in Another beauty of this process is that you easily. conjunction with Astronomers Without Bor- can have more than one sips command look If you have any questions, please contact ders and the Afghanistan Astronomy Associa- at the same sequence and save at an addition- me: Adam Thanz; thanz@kingsporttn,gov. I tion. They plan to “provide science education to Afghan children and underserved ethnic groups by sharing the wonder and beauty of the universe.” Additional information on the PARTYcles Alex Cherman project and fund raising efforts are at www.in- 99% of an diegogo.com/reachforthestars. atom is I look forward to visiting with some of you empty space Hey! Where did you go? personally in Baton Rouge, and I wish all of But that is just you a profitable winter/summer, depending the way of the upon your hemisphere. I world… Look around! All you see is emptyness, This is sooo emptyness, depressing… emptyness!

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30 Planetarian June 2012 June 2012 Planetarian 31 (FullDome, continued from Page 21) miss the accustomed wealth of astronomical subjects, receptive minds welcome the forward-looking aspects of the new medium: testing new stylistic devices and uncommon perspectives, and filling out the intersection between science visualization, tasteful entertainment and artistic enactment. It is here that the foundations are laid for the future of knowledge communication.

Main themes to visualize The fifth FullDome Festival again had a main theme: Franz Liszt, the composer and virtuoso pianist, had lived and worked in Thuringia for quite some time. Many events in 2010, the year of the 200th anniversary of his birthday, paid tribute to the maestro. In the Festival’s “VisuaLiszt” program, student, professional and freelance producers fol- Tim Florian Horn receives the Honorable Award for Life: A Cosmic Story from the gods Venus and Janus. Ja- lowed Franz Liszt’s tracks, interpreting and vi- nus, equipped with two faces to look in opposite directions, front and back, past and future, is said to sualizing his music by sketches, animations or be the god of fulldomers. Photo by Andrea Ludwig. collages, even transferring him into the present as a pop star with an electric guitar. The (FullDome winners, continued from Page 21) fifth Festival saw the highest prize moneys so far awarded to fulldome productions, donated II. Honorable Mention Awards for full-length feature shows; ratings obtained from an by the State of Thuringia. eight-member group of experts during the festival This was the first FullDome Festival at Life: A Cosmic Story for best Integration of scientific data visualization into fulldome and which a small group of participants, led again best in narration; California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, USA by highly committed students, dealt with the The Future for innovative use of fulldome to pursue corporate visions, Airbus, France challenges of real-time visualization, a subject Planet Earth-life between ice ages and global warming for introducing a topical subject in that future festivals will continue to pursue. an intriguing combination of animated visuals, narration and soundtrack; Planetarium With the sixth FullDome Festival, the orga- Hamburg, Germany. nizers can be proud not only of the continu- ity and sensible development of this annual Students Clips; finalists chosen by the FullDome event, but also of an unbureaucratic approach Festival jury so beneficial to the medium and its makers. •• 407 by Sabrina Winther, HfG Offenbach The main theme of the 2012 Festival was •• Blue by Jiayao Chen and Jie Wang, Bauhaus-Uni- “Dissolving Space,” which could be under- versity Weimar stood literally as well as in the figurative sense. •• breakFAST by Sönke Han, Bauhaus-University With 31 full-length shows, the event chal- Weimar lenged the onlookers’ seating stamina and ex- •• The spirit with two faces by Jiang Yang and Flori- ercise their neck muscles. an Meyer, Bauhaus-University Weimar Whereas in the first few years it was possible •• The Cellar by Julius Hass and John Graf, FH Kiel to present all contributions entered, the orga- •• Sleeping Beauty by Zhang Xiaodong, Bauhaus- nizers and jurors today have the challenging University Weimar task to separate the wheat from the chaff in •• Feedback by Nicolas Gebbe, HfG Offenbach advance. Fulldome clips produced for the Fes- •• Sharks and the ones they love, by Aleksander Rada tival, meanwhile, are shown in many domed , HfG Offenbach theaters and at other festivals on the globe. •• Now a piece by Leonie Link, HfG Offenbach The promotion of student work will re- •• Laser Head Explosion by Denis Carbone, HfG Of- main a main focus of the Festival. For sever- fenbach al years now, students have participated also •• Listen Carefully by Sebastian Hilgetag and Marie The winners of two FullDome in the festival organization and communica- Awards: Sebastian Hilgetag and Ma- Havemann, FH Potsdam tion. The Jena FullDome Festival will contin- rie Havemann, students at the Pots- •• One Life Stand by Thomas Bannier, HfG Offen- dam University of Applied Sciences. ue to be a hub for young creatives and old, bach Their fulldome clip Listen Carefully experienced hands; it will bring together pro- •• Pressure by Rose Generazio, Ringling College of received the Audience Award (vot- ducers and consumers, and help dig up the in- Art and Design ed by the audience at the Festi- exhaustible potentials of the 360-degree me- val Gala) and the “Dissolving Space •• Plaster by Marc Rühl, HfG Offenbach Award,” the award in recognition of dium. Today, a FullDome award obtained in •• Xaboh by Lydia Mueller, Bauhaus University the special theme of the 2012. Photo Jena is considered a genuine proof of achieve- Weimar by Andrea Ludwig. ment and a worthy distinction. For more, go to www.fulldome-festival.de. I

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™ We can take you there S11-a11-01 June 2012 Planetarian 33 Full-Size De niti Theater Capabilities To Go

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34 We canPlanetarian take you there™ June 2012 S11-a12-01 National Geographic Films

Four Shows For Fulldome From The Giant Screen Solar Storms Available in 2D and 3D stereo. Take advantage of stunning giant screen quality with these films formatted for fulldome. Length: 20 minutes. Sea Monsters, Forces of Nature, and Bugs! were digitally scanned and reformatted for the A Melrae Pictures production in association with K2 dome using Sky-Skan’s flat-screen to dome transformation process. Solar For Storms, Communications. Developed with the assistance of NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Sky-Skan accessed the original animation files, adding spherical stereo cameras and Fulldome Version Produced and Distributed re-rendering each scene to take full advantage of the fulldome environment. We’re Exclusively By Sky-Skan. proud to provide quality titles that both excite and educate. Sea Monsters Request Your Preview DVD Today! Available in 2D and 3D stereo. Length: 40 minutes. Transformed from giant-screen film by Sky-Skan. Produced by National Geographic. Transform coverage is truncated from fulldome. Forces of Nature Length: 40 minutes. Transformed from giant-screen film by Sky-Skan. Previewing these shows is easy! Just request a DVD by sending an e-mail to Produced by National Geographic and Graphic Films, Inc. [email protected] with the shows you’d like to see and your mailing address. If you’d Transform coverage is truncated from fulldome. like pricing, then please include your annual attendance, approximate number of seats, and dome size. Bugs! Available in 2D and 3D stereo. View Our Complete Catalog On-line Length: 23 or 40 minute versions. Transformed from giant-screen film by Sky-Skan. Sky-Skan’s distribution catalog now has over 80 titles! You can browse them online and Produced by Principal Large Format and SK Films. watch preview videos for many of the shows at our website: SkySkan.com/shows. Transform coverage is truncated from fulldome.

June 2012 SkySkan.com | Americas/Pacific tel +1 603-880-8500, [email protected] | Europe tel +49 89-6428-9231, [email protected] | Australia/Asia tel +61 3-9372-6444, [email protected] 35 S11-a08-01 BLAST OFF! Go on a futuristic journey through our Solar System. With Earth’s resources being rapidly depleted, a tycoon sends our hero, Jack Larson, on a mission to discover a new home to colonize. This character-driven show is perfect for middle-school fi eld trip groups and aligns with national science curriculum Coyote has a razor- objectives! Audiences age 10 and up. sharp wit, but he’s a Running time: 27 minutes. little confused about what he sees in the sky. An original production of UNC Morehead Planetarium and Science Center. Written Join this amusing character by Will Osborne. (adapted from American Indian oral

The material contained in this planetarium traditions) in a fast-paced and fun fulldome show is based on work supported by the National Aeronautics and show that explores lunar phases, eclipses Space Administration (NASA) under grant award number and other puzzles. NNX09AL78G. Any opinions, fi ndings and conclusions or recommendations Engaging and immersive, Earth, Moon & Sun™ expressed in this material are those of the author also examines how humans learn through and do not necessarily refl ect the views of space exploration. Audiences age 5-11. NASA. Running time: 26 minutes.

An original production of UNC Morehead Planetarium and Science Center.

By popular demand! A Morehead original short fulldome show that is winning international acclaim. Running time: 3 minutes. S12-a04-01

We can take For previews36 and pricing, visit SkySkan.com/shows or Planetariancall +1 603-880-8500 or e-mail [email protected]. Juneyou 2012 there™ AHHAA Science Centre Planetarium Sadama 1, 51004, Tartu, Estonia www.ahhaa.ee

Margus Aru

Margus Aru, Planetarian [email protected] AHHAA Science Centre Planetarium is located in south-eastern as a part of the tour. part of Estonia and in the country`s second largest city, Tartu. It`s Some thoughts were considered while the building was only a the only hybrid planetarium in the region of Baltic states. project on architects’ desks. It was actually their idea, not the as- The Planetarium and Science Centre opened its doors to the tronomers, to have fully spherical planetarium on the roof of the public on 7 May 2011. We are a very young planetarium and still science centre. The architects had no interest in what would be in- looking for our “spirit.” So far, we`ve been running almost for a side that sphere; with corridors, it was just supposed to be an ele- year now, but in order to understand how it all started and what ment of design. led to the current installation, we must jump some years back. The conception of a sphere on the roof seemed quite impracti- It was the year 1997, when first planetarium shows took place cal, but that project won the competition so it just had to be built. here. The planetarium was usually functioning as a part of AHHAA Inside, there was supposed to be semi sphere, a usual planetarium scientific exhibitions. In dome. its first two years, the At first, a Carl Zeiss ZKP-4 with digital Spacegate system was se- planetarium’s ZKP-2 lected for the planetarium, with two digital projectors. During the was the most favourite busy negotiations with Zeiss Company, AHHAA former director exhibit among visitors. Tiiu Sild met Takayuki Ohira, the creator of the Megastar projec- That`s not surprising, tor, at the 2008 IPS conference in Chicago. That changed every- because it was the first thing, and the presence of a fully spherical dome played a signifi- chance for everyone to cant role in the final result. visit a planetarium in From then on, Tiiu`s, and especially Ohira`s, wild fantasies met Estonia. It was managed no limits. MEGASTAR IIB was selected to be the main star projec- by the Astronomy Club tor, and MEGASTAR ZERO was added below a glass floor, in order of the Tartu Old Obser- to create the image of stars under visitors’ feet. vatory. The number of digital projectors is now five (one of them under Some years later, a the floor), covering some 300 degrees in all directions, both hor- Starlab was added to the izontally and vertically. The digital picture is provided by SCISS planetarium invento- AB’s program Uniview. ry. Both planetariums This unique system, though, has also negative aspects. First, the are still in use. Zeiss Kle- number of seats decreased to 16. Secondly, what needed to be cre- ine Planetarium-2 is curated from zero was the position of the digital projectors and their rently installed in the control systems. The relatively small (9 m) sphere had its limits, historical Tartu Obser- and the positions of the projectors are inside the sphere, not in the vatory, which is known wall. The current installation is compromise solution based on the Wikimedia Commons by a famous 19th centu- size of the sphere and expected results. ry astronomer, Wilhelm Within a year of the planetarium’s opening it has become the Struve. The Starlab is located in the AHHAA Science Centre as a most visited astronomy-related facility in the region. Approxi- secondary planetarium to be used on special events, like the day mately 50,000 pairs of eyes have witnessed the miracles of the uni- of planetaria. verse. That makes about 4,000 visits in one month, all carried out Ideas of having a modern, world-class planetarium came with live and interactively by the planetarian. the birth of the new science centre main building in Tartu. Now- We don`t run planetarium movies or automated sessions (yet). adays, almost all leading science centers have their own planetari- Typically we have 8–12 live shows every day and on weekends 16, ums, and today, it seems to be obligatory to have the planetarium (Continues on Page 40)

June 2012 Planetarian 37 Think about some of your class visitors Educational Horizons and when they visit the planetarium. Do they come at the beginning of a unit as explorato- Jack L. Northrup ry experience? Is the visit in the middle of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Planetarium unit as a opportunity for the student’s ques- King Science and Technology Magnet Center tions to be answered? Is the trip right be- 3720 Florence Blvd., Omaha, Nebraska 68110 USA fore the unit test as a summative experience, +1 402-557-4494 where they demonstrate upper level think- [email protected] ing/understanding skills? Or, is the visit after the test as a prize for the students? the skills to be savvy users), and relevance. So I have had experience next fall I signed up for the course “Rigor and with a couple of my regu- Relevance in an Urban Setting.” I will let you lar groups stopping their know how it went in a later article. I want the annual trip because their statement from the workshop leader be “How trip was scheduled after can we help students demonstrate the full ex- the unit was over. My fa- tent of their understanding?” vorite quote from their **Jumps off soapbox. Ouch! Stubbed my evaluations included: toe, but I stuck the landing.** “Even the students who The flavors of motivation were passionate about the subject seemed not to be I want to talk about motivation, and all the engaged in the lesson.” flavors it comes in. Most of the time the two Of course the students were not engaged; types that people hear about are intrinsic and they had mentally moved on to the dino- extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is tied to your saurs unit that follows astronomy. I suggest- personal drive to do something. It is built up ed that they give it one more try and move it I am writing this part of the Educational by reinforcement from friends and family 1 to a quarter of the way through the unit, and Horizons article from on top of my soap box , support and beliefs. to bring questions to try to “stump the astron- saying “I can’t take the test for the students!” Extrinsic motivation is derived from inter- omer.” By having the group come earlier, we This year I was given the opportunity to at- actions with people outside your interperson- were able to transition the trip to the plane- tend approximately 54 hours of professional al bubble. These are the motivators that most tarium from a reward to an active part of the development on student achievement, litera- people, later in life, will instruction. cy, rigor, testing, data analysis (never tell the look back and remember; Also, let’s take a moment to reflect on the speaker that their data’s best fit curve would they remember the mo- type of presentation you would use at differ- be better if he had used a Fourier curve), and tivator and not always ent times in the unit. Early in the unit, the teaching strategies during the last school year. the skill. students have more misconceptions than A statement that was repeatedly tossed at Here are some com- knowledge, so you need to spend more time the educators in the room was “What can we mon motivators: addressing these. At mid-unit, the students do to make the students do better on their Read and Feed—If have developed the foundation ideas and tests?” I had to put my mental brakes on that you read this book, we will have vocabulary but not seen the applications idea because of three misconceptions: a themed party or candy when of this knowledge. •• Students do not have independent we get done. Finally, for students visiting before thoughts. Really, I would like to meet these Gold Stars—Great job, you 2 the test: this is not a test review (“Jack, young Borg … I mean students. got the task done, here is Patty, Kris, and Mike, please put your •• Students will follow perfectly the instruc- your gold star. notebooks away.”). This is one of those tions the first time. (I work with adolescents Task Charts—Let’s ideal times to have the students take the and if one—or worse, a group—is acting per- look at the chart and wheel and drive the presentation. fect, then they are up to something or have see who still needs An example of this is “Do the moon phas- done something naughty and are hoping to complete their es on other planets look like our moon’s?” I you don’t think of them when you find out task. Albert E., have a nice Deimos demonstration using my what is was.) it looks like A3-P: latitude at 0 degrees, turn off stars and •• The teachers bravely lead their students you still the planets, turn on the moon and cardinal into battle with the test. It throws out the need to points, and if you run annual motion to full pedagogical movement of the last 20 years finish you get a good idea of the phases seen by the from “guide on the side” back to “sage on your unify- fast-moving moon. the stage.” ing forces equa- Invent ways to make your patron’s visit to For some reason I was never able to attend tion, so no recess for the planetarium something more than the the meetings I wanted to attend: motivation, you. Isaac N., and Marie C., carrot at the end of the unit, and you will see a technology integration (don’t burn up my good job; you are dismissed. more engaged audience. email on this one, I want to teach students not Field Trip—If you do well on only how to use specific technology but also your astronomy test, we are going to the plan- Danger: cross breeding etarium. Now it has come to the point of the arti- 1 A metaphoric podium from which opinions are Stop! A trip to the planetarium as a reward? stated. That can’t be right. (Continues on Page 40) 2 Cybernetic species from the Star Trek franchise

38 Planetarian June 2012 Indianapolis 317-863-0525 www.bowentechnovation.com

June 2012 Planetarian 39 (Under One Dome, continued from Page 37)

sometimes even 18 shows daily. It`s possible to book sessions in Estonian, English, Russian and Latvian, as a number of visitors are from the aforementioned neighboring countries. Planetarium is opened every day, except when it is occasionally closed for maintenance work. The new planetarium needed people who could perform shows and popularize astronomy. Therefore, a planetarium study group was formed, mainly com- posed of university students, to learn the skills needed in planetarium. Of the 23 people who attended, 16 graduated successfully and 6 people from the study group are now actively associated with planetarium activities. They know now how to work with AHHAA Sci- ence Centre’s Uniview-MEGASTAR hybrid planetarium, the Starlab and opto-mechanical ZKP-2. Stud- ies lasted for 4 months, with actual practice in all of The AHHAA Planetarium’s glass these planetariums. floor (above) and one of its MEGASTAR projectors. Photos Our planetarium is still improving, in collabo- courtesy AHHAA Science Cen- ration with Ohira Tech Ltd, to make the universe a tre. more interactive and educative experience for people of all ages all around the globe. Last, but not the least, in 2013 the AHHAA Science Centre Planetarium is hosting the Nordic Planetarian Association’s biennial meeting, from 6–8 September, and we are looking forward to seeing you then. I

(Education, continued from Page 38) cle that I normally include a lesson for you The characters spoke to my students. Their their teachers to build tetrahedrons to add to try in the planetarium or a list of books to mission in the book was to build a world-re- to the two projects. Detention students who read during the summer. Well, this time I have cord-breaking tetrahedron, and this ignited claim to have no work to do are more than cross-bred them and created something new the students’ interest. willing to help cut out 20-30 tetrahedrons. (insert mad scientist laugh here). Currently we have two tetrahedrons being The planetarium’s tetrahedron project goal Having the planetarium housed with- constructed, one in the planetarium and the is based on the number tetrahedrons created, in a school has other in a math classroom. Students finished while the project for the math classroom is to meant that I get with their work are borrowing scissors from build tetrahedrons to the ceiling. I to teach a home- room (we call them PRIDEs3), and for the last A National Meeting on Science Education and Communication few years it has Tucson, Arizona, August 4-8, 2012 been a group of seventh graders The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP), in partnership with the American Geo- for me. This year, physical Union and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, is delighted to open as a community- the registration for its 124th Annual Meeting and its national conference on “Communi- building experi- cating Science.” ence, we had com- Hundreds of education and outreach professionals, scientists, educators at all levels, au- munity members thors of print and on-line materials, journalists, public information officers, museum staff, join our PRIDEs social media managers, apps developers, and other involved in communicating space and once a month to introduce or discuss a book. earth science will be gathering at the air-conditioned DoubleTree Tucson hotel for panels, One book stuck out this year in not only workshops, talks, posters, exhibits, and discussions. my class, but nearly all of the seventh grade The conference web site has more detailed information and is now accepting registra- classes: All of the Above4 by Shelley Pearsall. tion and abstract submissions at: www.astrosociety.org/2012meeting There will also be a weekend workshop on teaching hands-on astronomy (with a focus on planetary exploration and reaching under-served minorities) on Sat. and Sun., Aug. 4 & 5, 3 “Purposeful Reading In Developing Excellence” for teachers in grades 3-12, and those who work with them. I 4 Little, Brown & Co., 2006 in hardcover, 2008 in softcover.

40 Planetarian June 2012 8.5X11_AD.pdf 1 11/9/2011 12:17:42 PM

NARRATED BY LIAM NEESON

D Y N A M I C

Exploring Earth’s Climate Engine

CMY

CREATIVEMEDIA Thomas Lucas Productions

June 2012 Planetarian 41 We are thrilled to partner with NASA and the AMA to help families enjoy the dynamics of IMERSA News flight and serve as a catalyst to inspire them to explore opportunities in science and technology.” Judith Rubin The NASA grant allows The Children’s Mu- seum to distribute to oth- Communications Director, IMERSA.org Flight Adventures er planetariums free of charge (except for the [email protected] cost of shipping and handling). The show will be distributed as dome masters (high-resolution .PNG sequence with 5.1 surround sound Expanding Universe of Content: a first plane ride. in .wav files). Case studies of non-astronomy The pair steps back in time to learn about content in planetariums historical figures in aeronautics, such as Leon- Cleopatra makes it in Milwaukee ardo da Vinci, the Wright brothers, Samu- What kinds of diverse content are planetar- According to Bob Bonadurer, director of el Langley and Chuck Yeager. They go inside iums embracing in their digital domes? IMER- the Daniel M. Soref Planetarium & Imax at a spin tunnel and find out how NASA test SA put out the call to find out and came up the Milwaukee Public Museum, the impetus planes to make them safer, and viewers get to with three intriguing and distinct examples. for the in-house produced, 25-minute full- ride along as a glider drifts through the atmo- We had wondered if non-astronomy pro- dome show Cleopatra’s Universe was the need sphere on Mars. gramming might sometimes engender a crisis for a media tie-in with a Cleopatra exhibit. The show runs 24 minutes on the Digistar of conscience at a facility in terms of program- The museum’s 72-foot, 260-seat, stadium-style 4 system in the 40-foot, 130-seat SpaceQuest ming and mission. What we found was simply dome theater with 30-degree tilt houses both dome that uses 2 projectors and a concentric wide-eyed interest and enthusiasm. a Digistar 3 system and Imax film projection. seating configuration. Coincidentally, the institutions we heard “Our best theater shows are the ones relat- Although it is SpaceQuest’s first in-house from are all in the US and are all running Di- ed to our exhibits,” explains Bonadurer. “It production in fulldome technology, Flight Ad- gistar systems. was the first time we had an exhibit for which ventures is not the planetarium’s first non-as- there was no giant screen film tie-in. There are tronomy show. plenty of Cleopatra movies, but nothing cre- SpaceQuest investigates the “A” “We’ve ventured out of the box on several ated for the big dome, so we decided to make in NASA occasions,” says Lawson, mentioning a chem- our own. The SpaceQuest Planetarium at The Chil- istry show and a show celebrating the art of “We took some of the artifacts in the ex- dren’s Museum of Indianapolis recently pre- Dale Chihuly (both productions pre-dated the hibit and modeled them in 3d animation. We miered its first in-house, fulldome produc- museum’s fulldome system). tion: Flight Adventures, which ties green-screened a couple of actresses to play in with an array of experiences at Cleopatra as a child and an adult. It’s basically the museum called Curious Scien- a bio of her life, and then as we tell her story, tific Investigators: Flight Adven- we specifically relate to some of the artifacts. tures. It was a great chance to recreate her life and Planetarium manager Deb Law- surroundings: we recreated the Alexandria li- son reported that the production brary, Pharoah’s lighthouse, her palace, the Al- was supported by NASA grant exandrian harbor. NNX10AK16G, awarded through “Cleopatra was Greek, so we also did a tour the Competitive Program for Sci- of the Parthenon, and for her Rome connec- ence Museums and Planetariums. tions, we recreated the Theater of Pompeii, “The focus is on aeronautics— which was built when she was queen.” the second letter in NASA’s acro- The show contains about 5 percent astron- nym—and not astronomy,” ex- omy, but is primarily focused on history and plained Lawson, who will be as the first show of its kind for the theater, it raised some branding issues. attending IPS 2012 and market- Flight Adventures bring grandfather together with family in a ing Flight Adventures there. “Spe- flight experience; courtesy Space Quest Planetarium “We couldn’t call it an Imax show,” says cifically, the content is focused Bonadurer, “and we didn’t want to create a on model aircraft. Not only is third definition, so marketing-wise we had to flying model aircraft a hobby, but NASA has The museum works hard to supplement call it a planetarium show; hence the title. We used models for testing since the beginning. all of its exhibits and offerings with programs also modeled the temple of Hathor in Egypt, Our team worked together with NASA-desig- that satisfy national core standards in curric- which has this zodiac ceiling feeling. The oth- nated partners to develop and build this show. ulum. “This multimedia show demonstrates er astronomical connection was the story of We decided to do something a little different.” ways children and families can learn valu- Eratosthenes, a famous 2nd century B.C.E. The story of Flight Adventures involves a able STEM concepts (science, technology, en- mathematician who measured the circumfer- 10-year-old girl whose grandfather is a mod- gineering, and math) together in an engaging ence of the earth. Cleopatra was a smart, atten- el aircraft hobbyist and their discovery of the and hands-on way,” said Dr. Jeffrey H. Patch- tive student and would have learned that.” fascinating world of aeronautics. Along the en, president and CEO, The Children’s Muse- “We do a live sky talk before the show,” he way, they visit the Academy of Model Aero- um of Indianapolis. adds. “People aren’t always expecting it, but nautics (AMA), take a journey back in time “Several academic studies suggest that skills they love it.” to learn about the history of flight, observe in these disciplines are valuable components Robin Sip of Mirage 3D was a consultant on NASA flight experiments, and share the joy of in enabling the next generation of innovators. the $250,000 production, which is distribut-

42 Planetarian June 2012 The moment science and wonderment merge. This is the moment we work for.

// PLANETARIums m AdE By CARL ZEIss

We have been bringing the stars down to earth since 1923. Millions of people have discovered the magic and fascination of the night sky in planetariums from Carl Zeiss. With solid technology and simple operation, we aim to play our part in ensuring that science and wonderment continue to merge in the future.

www.zeiss.de/planetariums

June 2012 Planetarian 43 The show poster for Cleopatras’s Universe; Soref Planetarium (left) and its Director Bob Bonadurer (center). Images courtesy Soref Planetarium. ed by the museum. And Cleopatra’s Universe to host various events in our facility, such as social media (@jmuplanetarium on Twitter) to has been successful enough that its successor, our ‘Valentine’s Day Movie Under the Stars’ reach his target audiences, and has had some Space: It’s a Whole New Ballgame, is already un- night.” notable successes. derway. “It uses sports to teach physics,” says The Wells Planetarium system is a $1.3 mil- Bad Science nights have been a hit, with the Bonadurer. “We have our own Red camera lion hybrid facility that pairs a Digistar 3 standard format movies projected on a por- and will use that and computer graphics.” with a GOTO Chronos in its 75-seat, 30-foot tion of the dome. “It’s brought in people who When asked about taking on topics outside dome. Much of the programming—all of it wouldn’t otherwise think of coming here and conventional star shows, his immediate an- free of charge—is conventional, family-ori- lets us debunk some of the bad science that swer was, “You study—that’s what I did with ented planetarium fare. But since coming on often gets propagated in our pop culture,” he Cleopatra—and it was a joy. I’ll learn almost board in February 2011, Virani has energetical- says. He explains the premise of The Core, a re- anything. As informal educators that’s our ly worked to cast a wide net and create inter- cent movie starring Hilary Swank. job: to make learning fun. Planetarium full- est and activities for community groups and “The Earth’s core has stopped rotating; dome systems often get sold specifically be- church groups in addition to K-12 groups and its magnetic field has ceased, and the solu- cause they can offer non-astronomy content,” university students. tion presented is to drill and then detonate he added. “It helps the funding when princi- “We have a lot of classes that meet in the nukes.” (This reminded us of A Crack in the pals, university faculty and others find out planetarium, and we develop our own teach- World which starred Dana Andrews—any- they can get a system that offers the capabil- ing guides,” he says. “I want people to have one remember it?-JR) What really bugs Vira- ity to do other kinds of shows.” multiple reasons for wanting to come here.” ni about The Core is that the writers unneces- Virani promotes his programming with a sarily made up the bad science. “They could Wells Planetarium casts wide net passion and an awareness that he’s competing have reasonably extrapolated a scientifical- “Because we aim to cast a wide net, we do with many other leisure activities, in-home ly believable outcome that would also have a lot of programming above and beyond full- and out-of-home. He makes extensive use of been compelling.” dome planetarium shows, live star talks and star parties,” says Shanil Vira- ni, director of the John C. Wells Planetarium at James Madison Universi- ty in Harrisonburg, Vir- ginia. “We do monthly public science talks and podcast each of these presentations. We also host ‘bad science’ movie nights, where we show bad science movies on the dome (The Core, 2012, etc) and then spend 15 minutes af- terwards debunking some of the bad science just presented. In addition, I work with local campus groups Meet The Scientist: A lecture by Prof Adrianan Banu on the Alchemy of the Universe at the Wells Planetarium; Director Shanil Vi- rani. Photos by JMU Photography Services, used with permission.

44 Planetarian June 2012 June 2012 Planetarian 45 To further engage people, the planetarium hosts undergrads for club nights, not just dealing with straight astronomy but also futuristic TV shows and movies such as Big Bang The- ory, Star Trek and Star Wars, working with the university program board. For Valentine’s night they used the starfield as a backdrop to present a “movie under the stars”—two sold-out showings of Ten Things I Hate about You. A large fraction of the people who attended hadn’t previously known about the planetarium. He also keeps an eye out for good content wherever it may be. “We had screenings of The City Dark, which premiered at the SXSW film festival. I learned of it this past January when I saw conversations on Twitter about a special screening for the American Astronom- ical Society. Fortunately, the Department of Physics & Astronomy graciously agreed to pay At the IMERSA Fulldome Summit, from left: Jane Crayton (ARTSLab), Antonio Pedrosa (IPS), Toby the screening rights fee so that I could show it Mensforth, Ed Lantz (IMERSA), Valerie Johnson-Redrow (PGA), Ryan Wyatt (IMERSA), Judith Rubin (IMER- SA), Daniel Tell (GLPA), Jeffrey Kirsch (GSCA), George Wiktor (TEA), Ian McLennan (CASC), Berend in the planetarium for free. We showed it on Reijnhoudt (GSCA), and Dan Neafus (IMERSA). Photo by James Hyder multiple Saturday nights at 7 pm. “It’s asking a lot for people to dedicate their Saturday night to watching a documentary Some other well-known faces from IPS at- Department at Ringling. about light pollution, but we had just over tended, including Antonio Pedrosa (IPS Full- As the keynote speaker for Cosmix this 300 come out, with full houses for the last dome chair), Daniel Tell (GLPA), Mike Bruno year, IMERSA founding board member Dan three screenings.” (Spitz Inc.), Michael Daut (E&S), Mike Murray Neafus of the Gates Planetarium presented There are also monthly science talks featur- (Clark Planetarium), Annette Sotheran Bar- “The Language of Immersive Cinema” prior ing university faculty and guest speakers, that nett (Sky-Skan), Matt Mascheri (Dome 3d), to screenings held at Riverview and Bishop. are later podcast (at www.jmu.edu/planetari- Laura Misajet (ZEISS), Mark Perkins (Ash En- Dan also held afternoon sessions with River- um/Podcasts.shtml). All this, explained Virani, terprises), Mark and Carolyn Petersen (Loch- view students and teachers in their planetar- furthers the cause of science education. ness Productions), Alan Caskey (Global Im- ium, and provided feedback to the Ringling “We have a lot of young kids getting turned mersion), Doug Roberts and Mark Paternostro students on their fulldome productions. off science. In middle school, girls are turn- (Adler), Glenn Smith (Sky-Skan Europe), and The synergy with Riverview is important ing off science. We’re trying to demonstrate quite a few more. for creative to them that science is fun, cool and worthy Roughly a third of summit attendees repre- joint ventures of interest—that even though we know a lot, sented the giant screen cinema or themed en- like Cosmix. there is so much out there yet to discover, tertainment sectors; the rest were planetari- “We are work- and that if they continue with science in high um/fulldome people, and the conversation ing on devel- school and college, they can be part of that was lively and positive. Coverage and confer- oping pro- adventure. The only prerequisite is to be cu- ence photos can be found at imersa.org and on gramming rious. What’s good about shows like Big Bang the IMERSA Facebook page. and integrat- Theory making headway is the positive image IMERSA is now in planning stages for Sum- ing it into their of characters who want to understand why mit 2013 in mid-February; exact dates to be STEM curricu- things are the way they are.” announced soon. Anyone interested in par- lum—with an ticipating on any level (planning, presenting, added ‘A’ for IMERSA Fulldome Summit recap screening, sponsorship, logistics, etc. or simply Art—in other The successful IMERSA Fulldome Summit attending), please query [email protected]. words, STEAM. took place Feb 3-5 at the Denver Museum of We’re real- Nature & Science and was attended by 120 Cosmix gathers STEAM ly just getting delegates from around the world. The goal of Creative cross-pollination was ever-present started on this Claudia Cumbie-Jones the summit was to promote “conversations of at the 5th annual Cosmix festival, April 13-14 collaboration,” convergence” among overlapping and com- hosted by Ringling College of Art & Design, says Cumbie- plementary business sectors. Riverview High School and the Bishop Plan- Jones. “It’s a 2-way street with lots of potential.” Four featured presenters were recruited to etarium at the South Florida Museum in Sara- Riverview recently received another grant that end: George Wiktor of the GW Group sota, Florida. to build an Aquaculture center and green- (Themed Entertainment Association), Jeffrey A featured screening was a sneak preview of house, and to complete their first in-house Kirsch of the Reuben H. Fleet Space Center (Gi- Stars to Starfish, the product of collaboration fulldome production, Stars to Starfish. ant Screen Cinema Association), independent between Ringling College, FulldomeFX, and “Immersive Media Studio is an open elec- producer Valerie Johnson-Redrow (Producers Riverview, which recently installed its own tive at Ringling,” notes Cumbie-Jones, “and Guild of America), and veteran industry con- 40-ft digital dome classroom, thanks to a $1.3 student work is approached from a variety of sultant Ian McLennan, a founding member of M grant. This community event ties in with relevant disciplines, including fine arts, illus- IMERSA and IPS Official Canadian Represen- fulldome-related curriculum headed up by tration, computer animation, motion design, tative (CASC). Claudia Cumbie-Jones, faculty in the Fine Arts (Continues on Page 58)

46 Planetarian June 2012 June 2012 Planetarian 47 found at photorumors.com/2010/12/03/flys- International News eye-camera-a-k-a-panoptic-camera. Jacques Roux (ART’M, Saint-Etienne, Lars Broman France) and Priscilla Maréchal (Le PLUS, Cap- Teknoland and Strömstad Academy pelle-la-Grande, France) are working on astro- Stångtjärnsv 132 nomical and cosmological representations of SE 791 74 Falun, Sweden non-scientific cultures in a planetarium show +46 2310 177 devoted to the distinction between construct- [email protected], [email protected] ed and revealed knowledge. www.teknoland.se, www.stromstadakademi.se The Palais de l’Univers et des Sciences of Cappelle-La-Grande has produced Yakor. Mem- With growing age I have had to realize that er, Vadim Belov, Bart Benjamin, Ignacio Cas- ory of the Worlds, scheduled for release in May memories nowadays are not measured just in tro, Gail Chaid, Alex Delivorias, John Hare, Ian this year. The program, produced in collab- years, not even decades, but increasingly in McLennan, Loris Ramponi, Aase Roland Ja- oration with ART’M creative associates in centuries (or at least fractions of centuries). cobsen, Mike Smith, and Michele Wistisen. I Saint-Etienne, This past winter, I was delighted to partici- wish you and other representatives back with recounts the pate in the Quarter-Century Anniversary of news for upcoming Planetarian issues. story of Akh- The Futures Museum with Kosmorama Space ram, whose Theater, which opened on 30 November 1986. Association of French-Speaking mission it is This is where the IPS’90 Boundless Planetari- Planetariums to collect, pre- um Conference was held. I hope several read- The Fondation de la Porte des Etoiles—or serve and re- ers have good memories of this event. the Foundation for the Port of the Stars, or store data from The International News column is built on Stargate—is developing a popular astronomy the peoples of contributions from IPS Affiliate Associations. center at the Chalet-à-Gobet, near Lausanne, the planet. But If you have news that you want colleagues the main city of Suisse Romande, French part the content of worldwide to read, please send them to your of Switzerland. Yakor is less IPS representative (see page 3). Their deadlines The foundation began planning in Febru- about the rep- are 1 July 2012 for Planetarian 3/2012 and 1 ary 2010 to finance, build and operate the cen- resentations of October for 4/2012, so they need your news ter in collaboration with the Espace des In- the universe ahead of those dates. ventions and a future park. in pre-modern You who want to contribute news from The foundation received 33 projects in an cultures than it parts of the world where IPS has no Affiliate architectural design contest and recently se- is the elements Association are welcome to send it to Martin lected “Azimut” (Azimuth), submitted by the of astronom- AFP: The Panoptic camera George, [email protected]. Lausanne Office J. b. Ferrari & Associés SA. In- ical knowl- from the Signal Process- For contributions to this International cluded in the plans is a 100-seat planetarium. edge that peo- ing Laboratory, EPFL, presented by Yusuf Leblebici. News column, I sincerely thank Agnès Ack- The project is expected to be completed in ple, scattered Courtesy of EPFL. 2014. over the plan- Walter Guyot, scientific advisor at the et, have always Vaulx-en-Velin Planétarium, is working gathered to try to observe, describe and under- on a PhD thesis within the framework of stand the universe. This aspiration to imagine science and technology of information how celestial mechanics run is a constant of and communication through the Uni- human history, as evidenced by the work of versity Claude Bernard Lyon 1 of Lyon. researchers in archeology, history, and an- In his study, he claims that the digital thropology. To learn more, go to www.artm. planetarium offers a technological frame fr/films_yakor.htm. and new learning to its visitors so that they can discover science “at work.” This Association of Italian Planetaria is thus a good way to train visitors to the Apart from its usual activities, in February practice of science and not to the simple the Ignazio Danti Planetarium in Perugia pre- consumption of a knowledge presented sented a theoretical-practical activity intro- by “scholars.” Walter Guyot will also al- duced by an examination of the composition low the population and the citizen to un- of light based on experiments by Newton, derstand the stakes and the interests of Bunsen and Father Angelo Secchi, who found- today’s science in a better way. ed the astronomical spectroscope. The Signal Processing Laboratory from The activity consisted of the construction the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lau- of a simple spectroscope using modest materi- sanne, Switzerland, is creating Panoptic, al and found objects. The spectroscope, which a revolutionary new 3D 360° camera, al- remains the property of the junior secondary lowing the production of 4K images and school class which participated in the activi- more than 30 frames per second videos, ty, can be used to observe the sun’s spectrum well adapted to fulldome projection in as well as that of street lamps. These are the objectives: Introduce New- The Futures’ Museum’s first Director Lars Broman the planetariums, especially for the on- speaking with present Director Eva Ramberg during going APLF show for the 50th anniversa- ton and other scientists who dealt with spec- the Anniversary dinner. Photo by Mariana Back. ry of the ESO. More information can be (Continues on Page 50)

48 Planetarian June 2012 THE ELUMENATI GEODOMETM EVOLVER

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Truncated Projection, Truncated Projection, Truncated Projection, Fulldome Projection, South of Starball Center North of Starball 160 to 180 degrees

The Evolver is the simplest and most cost-effective way to bring digital projection capability into your planetarium. Benefits of the OmniFocusTM digital projection system include: • Resolution up to 2560x1600 • Optimized pixel placement in your audience’s line of sight • Easy setup, operation and content creation • Low maintenance costs Complete packages including training start at $38,000

PHOTO : UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY PLANETARIUM EVOLVER COMPONENTS SOFTWARE OPTIONS GEODOME NETWORK • OmniFocus Projection System Expand your programming with a range • Collaborate with leading • Image Generating PC of options that let you explore from the educators • Optional 5.1 Audio System furthest reaches of the Universe to global • Download exclusive content • Cables & Interface processes here on Earth and into your • Join domecasts for professional own backyard including: • Installation & Training development and public events • Uniview • The Elumenati provides direct • Eyes on the Solar System hardware and content support • WorldViewer • DomeView Pro

The Elumenati Evolver has redefined astronomy education for us. Teaching concepts that were once out of reach are now an everyday lesson plan. Teachers and the general public marvel at what we can show and teach them, and we are constantly discovering more that we can do. Matt Linke, University of Michigan Museum of Natural History Planetarium

“The GeoDome is user-friendly and operations are very intuitive. Support services have been attentive and responsive. The Elumenati is forward thinking and knows how to listen and works in a collaborative way.” – Larry Mascotti, Mayo High School Planetarium

PHOTOS : DENNIS BRINKMAN, COMO PLANETARIUM

THE ELUMENATI [email protected] June 2012IMMERSIVE PROJECTION DESIGN Planetarian www.elumenati.com - www.geodome.info 49 the Italian participants of the conference. The Skype connection will be managed in Baton Rouge by Simonetta Ercoli, while the Italian planetarium that will host the IPS Day, and provide also for a public projection on a screen and for the translation from English, will be the Planetarium of Brembate di Sopra, near Bergamo. This planetarium hosted the 2012 Italian meeting of planetariums. During the IPS Conference, Susan Reyn- olds Button (chair of the Portable Planetari- um Committee) will organize a panel devoted to the experience of the Week in Italy, which,

AIP: Above: Photo Press conference in Lumezzane 2009. Courte- sy of Serafino Zani Astronomical Observatory. Right: Massimo Del- la Valle and Adam Riess holding an original copy of the De Revolu- tionibus Orbium Coelestium. Courtesy of Della Valle.

troscopy; learn the basic notions relative to the difficulties that had to be the composition of light; and participate in overcome and the hardships practical activities relative to fissures, diffrac- that were part of the quest to tion grating and sources of light. The follow- reach the west coast. ing materials were used: razor blades or simi- Moore’s explanations were clear and easy to since 1995, allows American planetarians to lar blades, CDs, plastic or cardboard cylinders, follow for those whose English was not exact- win travel in Italy. During the experience the black cardboard, glue, scissors, cutters, and ly perfect, and her willingness to answer ques- winner organizes planetarium lessons in Eng- drawing equipment. tions contributed to the interactive nature of lish for students from different Italian cities. On 29 March the Ignazio Danti Planetar- experience, which began as an experiment Also during the IPS Conference in Baton ium organized a Skype link-up with Loris and which will certainly be repeated in the Rouge a booklet that contains the experiences Ramponi in Brescia and the National Histor- near future in other museums. collected over the years during a Week in Ita- ic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper, Wyo- During one of the afternoons of the IPS ly, from 1995 to now, will probably be present- ming, USA. Stacey Moore and Michele Wis- conference in Baton Rouge, an IPS Day will ed. Past winners of the weeks and Italian orga- tisen, winner of the Week in Italy in the year be organized in an Italian planetarium. Ital- nizers will be invited to participate, also using 2010, gave a short talk about the Oregon Trail, ian planetarians who are not able to attend Skype, during the panel. its history, and the pioneers who travelled the important event in Louisiana but are in- The goals are not only to present this orig- west to Oregon and California in the 1800s. terested in knowing more about this meeting inal initiative, the only one existing in the The dioramas in the museum gave students will follow a Skype connection with the con- field of planetariums, but also to involve oth- a first-hand idea of day-to-day pioneering life, ference sites. er countries to make similar experiences. In fact, a Skype The Italian astronomer Massimo Della Val- connection will le and Button participated in a press confer- be organized and ence in the Municipality of Lumezzane dur- well prepared in ing Susan’s Week in Italy in 2009. Della Valle advance. That is director of the Capodimonte Observatory means to make (INAF-Naples) and scientific reference point contact early of the Serafino Zani Astronomical Observato- with some con- ry and Planetarium, and an expert on super- ference partici- nova and gamma-ray bursts. pants to listen to He has collaborated with Saul Perlmutter, their impressions Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess, Nobel laure- during the IPS ates for Physics in 2011. Della Valle and Riess Day, to organize participated the Naples Conference The fun- a virtual tour be- damental cosmic distance scale: state of the tween the con- art and the Gaia perspective (www.oacn.inaf. ference rooms it/ESFdistance) in May 2011. AFP: The internal view of the Planetarium Project “La Porte des Etoiles,” Lausanne. and the vendors’ Courtesy of J.-B. Ferrari-MISS3 area and to meet (Continues on Page 52)

50 Planetarian June 2012 June 2012 Planetarian 51 The new dome at TELUS Spark features an E&S Digistar 4 projection and planetarium system, presenting a mix of live star shows and recorded programs drawn from the fulldome and large-format film worlds. The screen, a NanoSeam dome from Spitz Inc., was installed in February and March. Also in March, staff finalized the selection of opening shows and began the process of programming the Digistar for local live presentations. Contact and information: Alan Dyer at alan. [email protected]. Edmonton was the site of Canada’s first public planetarium, the Queen Elizabeth Planetarium (opened 1960), and, in 1984, a brand new facility, the Margaret Zeidler Star Theatre, replaced it. In recent years, planning for a new digital visualization theater has become a major fo- AFP: Top: Akhram at work in the new program Yakor. Memory of the Worlds.Photo by/Courtesy of Le cus for the home institution, TELUS World PLUS-ART’M-Apside. of Science-Edmonton, and in anticipation of that eventuality, the existing planetarium Association of Mexican ed, Sky-Skan and Konica Minolta are getting theater has been equipped with a Sky-Skan Planetariums ready to install their equipment in the two fulldome system. Here science director Frank As mentioned in past reports, a continued 18-m (90-ft.) theaters, one hybrid (opto-me- Florian and other staff scientists create in- spree of new or refurbished planetariums con- chanical with fulldome video) and the other house presentations on astronomy and relat- tinues in Mexico, adopting digital projection fulldome only. ed subjects, augmented by globally-syndicat- systems in former opto-mechanical planetar- The new exhibit that will be housed in ed shows. iums. a 500-square-meter (5500-square-foot) area Under the leadership of CEO George Smith, For a second time in less than a year, the alongside the domes will be devoted to the TELUS World of Science-Edmonton is prepar- Planetario Cajeme, Antonio Sanchez Ibarra in search for life in the ing a bid to host the 2016 global conference Ciudad Obregón, state of Sonora, has benefit- universe and will use of the International Planetarium Society. The ed from upgrading its projection system. several touch screens, bid is endorsed by planetariums across Cana- Its spherical mirror projector, part of a basic interactive tables and da as well as various levels of government, the opto-mechanical planetarium, has changed augmented reality tech- Edmonton Centre of the Royal Astronomical into a latest-generation digital projection sys- nology to guide visitors Society of Canada, and the Alberta Museums tem from Digitalis Education Systems Solu- on their quest. Association. Contact Ian McLennan at ian. tions, Inc. The Montreal Plan- [email protected]. It is a Digitarium Zeta projector with a sin- etarium’s meteorite collection, one of the In Winnipeg, the Manitoba Museum’s gle fisheye lens and integrated planetarium most important in Canada, will also be on dis- Planetarium is planning for the arrival of its and multimedia display software that makes play near by a fully-functional meteorite lab, transitional fulldome system, to be installed it easier to where scientists will interact with the pub- in fall of 2012. This system will augment the present live, lic. Info: Pierre Chastenay at chastenay@astro. existing Zeiss projector and traditional sys- scripted or umontreal.ca. tem, providing access to new content and al- prerecord- Calgary’s new science center, sporting the lowing for staff training and production to ed fulldome new name TELUS Spark (www.sparkscience. begin in advance of the full upgrade, which is video shows. ca), opened 29 October 2011 at a site near the planned as part of the museum’s rejuvenation The plan- city’s other main attraction, the Calgary Zoo. over the coming years. etarium’s new projection equipment was in- The center has attracted over 150,000 guests While the transitional system will be under- augurated on 23 March 2012 by the president in its first four months of operation. powered in terms of brightness and resolution of the Integral Family Development System However, a core element, the 21-m (70-ft.) for a dome of this size (18.3 m, 61 ft.), a dem- (DIF)-Cajeme, Ms. Maria Laura Riemann de dome theatre, was still under construction at onstration system looked surprising good, es- Barro, who enthusiastically supports the plan- opening and had its own grand opening in pecially when compared with the aging slide- etarium activities led by Director María Flora late spring 2012. based all-sky projection system. Contact: Scott Chong Muñoz. The new dome is the third planetarium Young at [email protected]. built in Calgary. The original Calgary Centen- Canadian Association of nial Planetarium opened in 1967 with a Zeiss European/Mediterranean Science Centres Jena Universal projector. In 1996 this theatre Planetarium Association The construction of the Planétarium Rio was refitted into the tilted Discovery Dome, The Eugenides Foundation in Athens, Tinto Alcan in Montréal is proceeding on with a Digistar I and 8/70mm film system. Greece, premiered The Mystery of Life, its lat- schedule and the personnel should move in That theatre, which was never upgraded to est planetarium show, in January. With a mu- the new building by the end of 2012, for a fulldome capability, is now closed and gut- sical score by popular Greek composer Mimis public opening in the spring of 2013. ted of all gear except for the dome screen and Plessas, The Mystery of Life addresses the fun- While the intricate building is being erect- seats. (Continues on Page 53)

52 Planetarian June 2012 taken by Nespoli him- ring to this historical event. self while on board the Members of the Association Cezar cele- ISS during his 6-month brated The week of the dark sky between 17 stint. and 20 April with a presentation titled The Croatia: The plan- rhythm of life - modern technology in func- etarium of Rijeka As- tion of development and environmental pro- tronomy Centre in tection. Croatia included in The Rijeka Astronomy Center participated its program the digi- in the activities of the national Festival of Sci- tal show Kaluoka´hina- ence, which in this year celebrates its 10th an- the Enchanted Reef. niversary, with two live presentations in its Kaluoka´hina has been digital planetarium, on the Ten reasons for translated into the Cro- which we are fond of astronomy and the Ten atian language by ac- most popular constellations. tors from the Rijeka The centre and the Croatian Association Puppet Theatre and Crometeo, which focuses on weather observa- with the professional tion and forecast, celebrated the Internation- EMPA: ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli and Eugenides Planetarium Director help of Studio Maraton, al Day of Climate Action by organizing a pho- Dennis Simopoulos. Photo by Yannis Panousis, Eugenides Foundation. the company which pro- tography exhibition with photographs taken duced the show for the Ri- by its members under different weather con- damental questions regarding the emergence jeka planetarium. ditions, which was inaugurated on 15 May. of life on Earth and the immense variety of its Public attendance continues to be very In the period between 22 and 26 May 2012, species. high thanks to the numerous visits by school a live presentation on solar eclipses and the di- Starting with the formation of the solar sys- classes and tourists from Croatia and abroad. amond ring effect was presented in the digital tem and Earth, The Mystery of Life attempts to Also, the Rijeka Astronomy Centre, in its planetarium. There was also a new live presen- answer these questions, inviting viewers on a continuing efforts to upgrade its services, in- tation called The Sky Under Us, showing the fascinating journey. stalled wireless internet access throughout sky visible from the southern hemisphere. From the emergence of life to the appear- the centre. To help celebrate the International In the beginning of June, the regular pro- ance of ever more complex organisms and Month of Astronomy 2012 (April), for the first gram of the planetarium included a presenta- from Darwin’s 5-year voyage aboard HMS Bea- time since 2009, the Rijeka Astronomy Centre tion of a very rare event, namely, the transit of gle to the formulation of his theories regard- organised numerous activities: Venus across the solar disc. ing the origin of the species, the program is On the occasion of its third anniversary on the gripping story of one of the most valid sci- 5 April 2012, the singing choir Putokazi per- Great Lakes Planetarium entific theories of all time, the theory of evo- formed a concert. Association lution. Between 3 and 5 April, a program Holidays in Illinois. The planetarium at Lakeview Mu- As is customary with all digital shows of the the ACR was organised for schoolchildren and seum of Arts and Sciences is entering its final Eugenides Planetarium, a guide book, an illus- the cartoon film Kaluoka´hina was shown. few months of operation. On 16 July, the plan- trated book expanding on the main content Between 10 and 14 April, a 10-minute pre- etarium will close to begin the re-location of of the show with contributions from Greek sentation before the beginning of the regular their Zeiss Powerdome planetarium system to scientists as well as from Eugenides Founda- program was scheduled in order to celebrate the new Peoria Riverfront Museum. tion colleagues, was also published and given the 51st anniversary of man’s first flight in The staff expects to have the planetarium free of charge to the invited guests. space. The aim of this short presentation was operational by the end of August and be ready In March, and as part of the Eugenides to inform the public on the basic facts refer- for building preview activities in September. Foundation’s activities to celebrate The official public grand opening is the vernal equinox, ESA astronaut scheduled for 20 October 2012. Paolo Nespoli captivated his audi- This spring, the Lakeview Muse- ence with a humorous account of um Planetarium presented Dinosaur his experiences onboard the Inter- Prophecy from the Houston Muse- national Space Station. um of Natural Science in conjunc- Public attendance was so high tion with the exibit Be the Dinosaur that apart from the Foundation’s in their museum galleries. 400-seat main auditorium, which The William M. Staerkel Plane- was filled to capacity, two adja- tarium at Parkland College present- cent conference rooms were also ed their own live Spring Prairie Skies used, where the Italian astronaut’s show this spring in addition to Black presentation was transmitted on Holes: The Other Side of Infinity and screens. One World, One Sky: Big Bird’s Ad- Later on the same evening, Ne- venture. Girl Scout Sky Search mer- spoli and Dennis Simopoulos, the it badge workshops were offered in director of the Eugenides Plane- April with Boy Scout Astronomy tarium, inaugurated the photog- EMPA: Opera concert at Rijeka’s Planatrium performed by Diamante merit badge workshops following raphy exhibition A Space Voyage Classic Music Team for the firt time and especially for the Day of Plan- in May. Through the Images of ESA, which etaria 2012 with the finest lunar and stars arias. Photo by Rijeka sport The Cernan Earth and Space Cen- L.t.D. included some of the photographs ter of Triton College continues its

June 2012 Planetarian 53 ongoing project to convert its collection of Battle Creek has also slide-based programs to its new digital, three- ceased weekday opera- screen video system. Four planetarium pro- tions. grams have so far been completed, with two Ohio. The Caryl D. more nearing completion. Philips Space Theater Indiana. The SpaceQuest Planetarium at at Dayton’s Boonshoft the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis re- Museum of Discovery cently launched a new multi-media planetari- has just installed an Ev- um show titled Flight Adventures. Funded by a ans & Sutherland Di- NASA grant, this show explores the science of gistar 4 along with a flight and the use of model aircraft in that dis- 3D projector, replac- covery. Their planetarium show is the center- ing their D2 installed piece of a myriad of activities, displays, fami- in 2001. The installa- ly and public programs, outreach, and online tion follows a demon- games at the Children’s Museum. stration and fundrais- Michigan. The Delta College Planetari- ing period in 2011. um in Bay City recently ran three of its plan- CRAP (the Cleve- etarium programs as part of a collaboration land Regional Asso- with the Midland Center for the Arts exhib- ciation of Planetari- it “Space. Sky. Sci-Fi.” In April, they premiered ums) held its February Animalopolis, a giant screen film converted to meeting at the Interna- fulldome. Its most exciting aspect will be sev- tional Women’s Air & eral Animal Weekends that they will conduct Space Museum. Locat- after the show opens. Several zoos, the Hu- ed at Cleveland’s Burke mane Society, and a local nature center have Lakefront Airport, the agreed to bring in small, live animals for visi- IWASM preserves the GLPA: Supplemental programming, in which children and families can test things in a wind tunnel, is part of the activities exploring the science of tors to see and learn about. history and future con- flight at the SpaceQuest Planetarium in Indianapolis, Indiana. Photo cour- The University of Michigan’s big news is tributions of women in tesy SpaceQuest Planetarium that the College of Literature, Science, and the air and space through Arts (their parent within the university), has exhibits and educa- announced the formalization of plans to re- tional programs. Suzie Dills, formerly of the The Mayo High School Planetarium in place the museum building. The 70-year-old Schuele Planetarium, is executive director of Rochester, Minnesota recently installed a Det- building no longer meets the needs of the new the IWASM. onator Professional Workstation (made by science being done within it, and the plan- At the Shaker Heights High School Plane- Hardcore Computer), which allows the dome ning process has begun. The museum/planetarium, Gene Zajac’s astronomy club is work- to become a giant computer display screen, tarium is part of that overall plan, although ing on their spring public show that will look thereby transforming the planetarium into a the process to determine the specific details is at 20 years of Hubble and 50 years of Ohioans visualization learning lab. just getting underway. in space. The Kalamazoo Valley Museum Planetar- In western Pennsylvania, the Edinboro Middle Atlantic Planetarium ium recently premiered an in-house produc- University Planetarium reopened after three Society tion Crossing the Sun, which describes the years out of service due to building renova- Thomas Wm. Hamilton’s latest book is out, eclipses and transit of Venus that will take tions. All shows are now completely sky-ori- and copies are on their way to various po- place this year. Also shown was The Artists’ ented and live. Response to the reopening has tential reviewers. Our Neighbor Stars; includ- Sky, an in-house spring constellation show been overwhelmingly positive. ing Brown Dwarfs covers the 100 nearest stars, which looks at how artists, musicians, poets, In far western Ohio, at the Bowling Green with any known brown dwarfs within the and storytellers have used the sky for inspira- State University Planetarium, Dale Smith is range (19.4 light-years). It gives spectral class, tion. In other news, the staff recently installed running Earth Fest 2012, featuring a series of apparent and absolute magnitude, RA and a Kinect interface to their Digistar 4 laser sys- programs about our home planet. Dec, constellation, and much more. tem and are in the process of creating a mid- Wisconsin/Minnesota. The UW-Milwau- Hamilton is preparing to submit another dle school-level solar system show that will kee Manfred Olson Planetarium’s third annu- book after that, an anthology of his science use the interface and the seat keypads. al benefit event, titled Art in Space, recently fiction short stories (a couple fall in the range Grand Rapids’ Roger B. Chaffee Planetari- showcased art created by students and com- of fantasy rather than SF, such as the trib- um presented Our Bodies in Space during the munity members. Following a silent auction, al shaman fighting terrorists). The book after spring. This locally-produced show looks at Director Jean Creighton hosted a show that that will be devoted to the moons of the solar the effects of space travel on the human body. highlighted art and astronomy connections. system. For more information, see sbpra.com/ It accompanied the Ontario Science Centre’s Romancing the Stars once again graced the ThomasWmHamilton. temporary exhibit Facing Mars, which fea- skies at the Daniel M. Soref Planetarium in tured more than 20 interactive stations that Milwaukee. This original live production at- Nordic Planetarium Association described the challenges of space travel. tracted couples of all ages, from young adults Tom Callen’s new company, Eyemmer- In sadder news, the Dassault Systèmes Plan- to seniors, making it a truly non-tradition- sive, which started in 2011, is now the Europe- etarium and the Detroit Science Center real planetarium audience. The Soref’s original an representative for John Serrie’s profession- mains closed after the institution suspended production Cleopatra’s Universe is still running al space music library; see the website at www. operations late last year due to budget short- to complement the museum’s Cleopatra ex- eyemmersive.com for more information. falls. The Kingman Museum Planetarium in hibit. Callen, formerly astronomer/program pro-

54 Planetarian June 2012 RMPA: Above: Gillette Planetarium interior system; Right: Art interactive video wall in Gil- lette Planetarium. Right, below: Campbell County School District Planetarium in Gillette. Photos by Ken Miller ducer for nearly 20 years at Stockholm’s Swed- proposed in these tenders, a com- ish Museum of Natural History’s combination mittee of astronomers from Lund Imax Dome-digital planetarium-3D film the- Observatory chose to accept the ater, Cosmonova, recently celebrated 40 years tender made by Sky-Skan Europe. in the profession, having started in February After a big farewell feast held in 1972 at the Strasenburgh Planetarium in Roch- the honor of the retiring GOTO ester, New York. projector, the planetarium has Lund Observatory in Sweden opened its now closed and is going through planetarium in 1978 with an opto-mechani- some minor rebuilding before cal GOTO GE-6 projector at its centre. It was Sky-Skan installs the new equip- then one of two planetariums in the country. ment. The planetarium in Lund The Faculty of Natural Sciences at Lund Uni- expects to reopen during summer versity has now allocated the funds needed 2012. for upgrading the planetarium. A modern digital system will replace the long-lasting opto- Pacific Planetarium mechanical one. Association A public offer to tender for the new instal- The Reuben H. Fleet Science lation went out last fall and in response to Center moves into 2012 with a this the planetarium in Lund got 11 tenders beautiful seamless dome and a from seven companies. After carefully con- fulldome system. Here is the plan- sidering the hardware and software solutions etarium’s story: In the mid 1950’s, a group of San Diego citizens decided, along with many others in other cities, to build a palace of space and science called a planetarium. They wanted to be able to look down on the Earth from orbit, as well as to be able to project the star field in any ori- to as the “San Diego Design.” entation representing the maneuvering of the The original skin was butted together, and spacecraft. the joints were covered with paper tape print- At that point in time Spitz was building ed with dots. The tape had a different gloss large numbers of smaller instruments, and than the vinyl covered aluminum, and was they had built a very few instruments with visible as either dark lines, or bright lines, de- high quality star fields. But they were very pending on where you were sitting. The skin anxious to build a much better planetarium. was changed to a lap type of joint. The Spitz people liked the San Diego concept Many changes have happened in San Diego of the tilted dome. since 1950. In 2006, the 1973-era console was They built a wooden structure which al- replaced with a SPICE media control system lowed the dome to tilt at different angles. The for controlling the lighting and video equip- Spitz laboratory people were able to furnish ment. them with a small star projector as used in In 2008 the dome was replaced with a Spitz their school projectors to simulate a star field NanoSeam, a digital sound system was in- PPA: John Young, left, talks with author and art- in the dome. They added to this other image stalled, and the seats and carpet were replaced. ist Michael Carroll at a recent talk and book projection equipment for slides, and later, for Incandescent lighting was replaced with low- signing for Carroll’s newest book, Drifting on 35mm movies. Alien Winds, Exploring the Skies and Weather of energy LEDs. Other Worlds. Michael spoke to a large audience The practical experience of projecting in- In 2012, a fulldome system using 4 Sony at Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in San Diego, side of a dome was invaluable; designs result- SRX 420 projectors and 8 servers was installed California. Photo by Gail Chaid ing from this collaboration were to be referred by Global Immersion. Included was Uniview,

June 2012 Planetarian 55 the real time astronomy package. Having attended two programs in the planetarium/omnimax theater, Gail Chaid says that the seamless dome is impressive, as is the theater itself. The programs continue to be inventive with John Young’s creative talents and those of the planetarium staff. At the recent author talk with Michael Car- roll, Young says they used a slick combination of Uniview and PowerPoint! The planetarium continues to be a fun inventive place to be, to learn astronomy and to involve the community.

Rocky Mountain Planetarium Association Thirty years after its original opening, the planetarium in Gillette, Wyoming is once again on the cutting edge of technology. This last fall, under the direction of Paul Zeleski, the Campbell County School District Plane- RPA:. The new Novosibirsk planetarium. Photo by Serguey Vu. Maslikov tarium went through a major renovation and delighted the public with a state-of-the-art facility. eventually be put in the driver’s seat to devel- ent sections worked on these readings. The planetarium features the first GOTO op new uses for the planetarium and the me- Vadim Belov participated in the round ta- Chronos II Hybrid system in the western dia that is produced there. ble on 50 years of planetary space research hemisphere and an AVI SkyLase system. Since and in the section on the history of rocket and its opening in November, the planetarium has Russian Planetarium Association space technology. hosted three to five shows a day. In January, the XXXVI Academic Readings In the planetarium of the Moscow-based In the lobby, visitors are greeted by an in- on Astronautics took place at the Bauman Cultural Center of the armed forces of Rus- teractive video wall featuring meteorites, a Technical University in Moscow. Boris Cher- sia, a meeting for regular school lecturers took Viewspace display, touch screens, and Micro- tok, who died on 14 December, the colleague place on 29 February to 3 March. This “school” Tiles by Bowen Technovations. Once in the of engineer Sergei Korolev, was still listed as tradition was introduced by the director of planetarium, visitors get comfortable in the the chairman of the Organizing Committee the planetarium, Larissa A. Panina, and she new Planet Sonate chairs from Skeie. These of the Readings. In his place, at the desk of the still successfully supports it. chairs feature a reclining back and writing presidium of the plenary meeting appeared Dr. Lutz Muller, the representative of the desk cleverly hidden inside the armrests. Chertok’s huge four-volume Rockets and Peo- company Zeiss from Jena, held a speech be- Still to come in 2012: red LED lights and ple in English, the book on the history of Sovi- fore the participants from various planetar- iPod Touch units attached to the chairs to fur- et space exploration. iums. Lectures of leading Russian scientists ther the interactivity of the planetarium. A team of American specialists, with the about the latest research in near and far space When the show begins, the fulldome vid- chief historian of NASA Dr. Bill Barry at the were also presented, as was a round table dis- eo immerses the audience in stunning images head, presented the IVth translated volume cussion on science and pseudoscience. and animations, both educational and enter- and the rest of publication and told about Participants expressed concern over the un- taining. A guided sky tour includes constel- their work on the translation. Over 20 differ- precedented spread of non-scientific informa- lation overlays and line drawings to tion on the internet and agreed on help the less imaginative visitors see the necessity of active promotion of the characters and stories illustrat- scientific knowledge. ed in the sky. More experienced vis- The School Lectures were com- itors are encouraged to bring binoc- pleted with a visit to the Moscow ulars to view many hidden deep sky Planetarium. objects. The meeting of the Association The experience ends with a laser of Teachers of Physics and Astron- show; red, green, and blue lasers in omy of Nizhny Novgorod region the SkyLase system wash the entire was held in January at the Nizhny dome with all the colors of the visi- Novgorod Planetarium. During the ble spectrum. Just when the audience meeting the issues of astronomical, is settled into the experience, they aerospace, and science education are roused by the atmospheric lasers were discussed. beam shooting over their heads. Correspondence Astro Space In the future the planetarium will Olympiad for pupils from 7 to 16 continue to push itself by hosting years of age began on 1 February. It live musical and theatrical events was devoted to B. Chertoku, who along with in house productions. Students of Campbell County will RPA: The presentation of Rockets and People. Photo by Vadim V. Belov (Continues on Page 58)

56 Planetarian June 2012 FULLDOME www.spitzinc.com/fulldome_shows

Spitz_Zula_FullPage_11.07.11_v2.indd 1 11/7/11 2:11:33 PM Written by James Manning (IMERSA, continued from Page 46) photography, and digital filmmaking.” One For more information about the Cosmix and outreach. IAIA is the only four-year fine factor that helped to quickly and efficiently Initiative, visit www.ringling.edu/cosmix. arts degree institution in the nation devoted create media for fulldome this year was the to contemporary Native American and Alas- Cosmic Journey ability to preview the work-in-progress on the Art/science collaboration ka Native arts. “Cosmix Dome,” a one-person, 60-inch diame- Also on April 13-14, in the Southwestern The mission of the Complex is to create a ter, miniature dome. United States, The Institute of American Indi- collaborative workspace that fosters applied What are the Ringling students bringing to an Arts (IAIA) and the Santa Fe Complex host- complexity science through interdisciplinary A Solar System Adventure fulldome? “They’re exploring the potential ed DOME2012, a two-day immersive video ex- education, outreach, and development of in- of how to create artwork and tell stories in an perience featuring the world premier of new novative technologies to address real-world immersive medium,” says Cumbie-Jones. “We experimental video art in the Digital Dome at problems, enable social cooperation, and cre- see all kinds of integration with Ringling cur- IAIA. ate economic opportunities. The Santa Fe riculum; our majors are well connected to the DOME2012 was the first artist-in-residence Complex encourages collaboration among entertainment industry. Our students explore show at the Digital Dome and was curated by artists, scientists, and technologists, allowing alternative ways of thinking about the dome. Ethan Bach, Digital Dome Manager at IAIA new ways of thinking and creating to emerge. We had an introspective piece by a fine arts and Orlando Leibovitz, art director at the San- The event was partially funded by a grant student about the nature of narcissism, for ta Fe Complex. from the Santa Fe Arts Commission. which he used the dome to immerse us in the This collaboration featured video art creat- mind of another person. We also had a cou- ed for the dome by local and national artists, Events ple of digital filmmaking students do a trip including Mariannah Amster, Suzanna Carl- SIGGRAPH 2012 Conference, 5–9 August 2012; through a haunted house.” isle, Bruce Hamilton, Craig Tompkins, Charles Exhibition 7–9 August 2012. Los Angeles Cumbie-Jones envisions this energy being Veasey, Ethan Bach, Robert Drummond, An- Convention Center. s2012.siggraph.org harnessed to develop market share for plan- drew Elijah Edwards, Meghan Tomeo, and Jackson Hole Symposium, 5-7 September at etariums. “I would like to see this indie spirit Surabhi Saraf. the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. draw an alternative audience—nighttime en- The mission of IAIA is to empower creativ- From fulldome, large-format and 3-D pro- tertainment in the tradition of Laserium, cre- ity and leadership in Native arts and cultures gramming, to exhibit installations and in- ating a new kind of excitement.” through higher education, lifelong learning teractive media, social networking and public outreach, museums and cultural in- (International, continued from Page 56) stitutions present rich opportunities for collaboration with broadcasters and film- would have been 100 years old on March 1. On 8 February, another planetarium was makers. IMERSA will participate. jhfestival. On 12-13 March, the cosmonaut Igor P. Volk opened in Novosibirsk. It has an auditori- org/jhsymposium visited Nizhny Novgorod. Some time ago he um of 114 seats under a dome of 16 m (53 ft.) Giant Screen Cinema Association (GSCA) In- was a professional pilot and that is why he and a digital Barco system, two observatories, ternational Conference, 18-20 September was appointed commander of the crew of the and a separate standing tower Foucault. There at the Esquire IMAX Theater in Sacramen- Soviet shuttle Buran.I. Volk met the children are also exhibition halls and a movie studio, to, California; followed on 21 September by and the staff of the planetarium. which means that the planetarium director, Dome Day at The Tech Museum, San Jose. On 19 March professors of the Tata Institute Sergei Maslikov, aims to create fulldome pro- IMERSA will participate. www.giantscreen- of Fundamental Research in Mumbai (Bom- grams. The new planetarium is considered a cinema.com. bay), India, Swarna Kanti Ghosh (director of Children’s Educational Institution, since it is SATE 2012, 19-21 September at Disneyland Par- National Centre for Radio Astrophysics) and equipped with classrooms for students. is, France. Annual Experience Design con- Devendra Kumar Ojha (head of infrared as- ference hosted by the Themed Entertain- tronomy) also visited Nizhny Novgorod Plan- Southeastern Planetarium ment Association (TEA). Theme: Cultural etarium. Association Diversity: Obstacle or Opportunity? www. Zinaida Sitkova told them about IPS, and SEPA expects to have a large representa- sate2012.blogspot.com I drew their attention to the absence of an IPS tion at the upcoming IPS conference in Ba- National Association in India. Ghosh and ton Rouge. SEPA will hold a banquet on the Ojha told they would discuss it in India. evening of 21 July followed by paper sessions On 21 March, Russian specialist of Micro- and other presentations on Sunday. The busi- on.fb.me/PlanetariumTweets soft Kamil Akhmetov made a presentation ness meeting will take place on the following of the program World Wide Telescope at the Thursday during the regional breakout ses- Spring Astronomical Conference of teachers, sions. Real tweets about real planetariums Mario DiMaggio students, school students and amateur astron- Because of generous vendor support, the omers in Nizhny Novgorod. Saturday banquet and Sunday activities will •• Planetarium is shutting down ?! Nooo :(( The planetarium of the Siberian State Acad- be free of charge to all SEPA members. An- •• #imagine going to a planetarium with liam emy of Geodesy in Novosibirsk celebrated its other plus for SEPA is a subsidy of $200 to at- and you look up and see ‘will you marry 60th anniversary on 15 January. It is small, tend SEPA/IPS. This subsidy was available to EXPLORE THE WONDERFUL WORLDS THAT CIRCLE OUR REMARKABLE SUN. me’ written in the stars <3 with only 60 seats, but very active. Under the the first 20 qualifying members who applied •• I really wanna go to the planetarium on leadership of its director, Ellen Lugovskoi, to- and is being underwritten by the SEPA Schol- For licensing information please contact [email protected] acid like so bad #2012goals gether with the Novosibirsk instrument-mak- arship fund. or one of the following distributers. •• Is my son a con artist? Has field trip to Plan- ing plant, this planetarium has held in and The 2013 SEPA conference will be held in etarium 2morrow-said he can’t wear flash- around the city already six Siberian astronom- Jacksonville, Florida in June. Watch for details ing shoes? Trip to mall=lego sneaks for 40 ical forums, which annually attract about 500 in future issues of Planetarian. Cosmic Journey: A Solar System Adventure is a production of the Denver Museum of Nature & bucks Science, funded in part by Ratheon Company and the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District participants. For more, go to sepadomes.org. I (SCFD). Distributed by Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Approximately 23 minutes. © Denver Museum of Nature & Science. 58 Planetarian June 2012 Written by James Manning Cosmic Journey A Solar System Adventure

EXPLORE THE WONDERFUL WORLDS THAT CIRCLE OUR REMARKABLE SUN.

For licensing information please contact [email protected] or one of the following distributers.

Cosmic Journey: A Solar System Adventure is a production of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, funded in part by Ratheon Company and the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Distributed by Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Approximately 23 minutes. © Denver Museum of Nature & Science. June 2012 Planetarian 59 I reminded that it is always crucial to address Mobile News age-related student characteristics as you are writing lesson plans/programs. Now let’s explore the basic tips applicable to script writing for mobile dome lessons. Susan Reynolds Button If you are a new member and do not own Quarks to Clusters the 2005 booklet (on CD ROM) called IPS Tips 8793 Horseshoe Lane for Excellent Planetarium Scriptwriting, you Chittenango, New York 13037 USA might be interested in acquiring one from the IPS Publications Committee. The tips be- +1 315-687-5371 low are my contribution to the booklet, with [email protected], [email protected] some minor revisions. The forte of the portable dome is the rap- The World’s Smallest Planetarium Big Dipper. Not really visible in the picture is port and intimacy you can achieve with au- Steven Russo, a good friend and fellow Mid- a section of the box where the wall can be re- diences while having them participate in the dle Atlantic Planetarium Society colleague, is moved; you could actually look through the lesson. Interactive lessons work best in porta- well known for his vast collection of all things ‘front doors’ of the planetarium and see the ble domes. The audiences’ minds can be stim- astronomy, space science and planetarium re- stars on the dome! ulated and disciplined to observe everything lated. He recently posted this most interesting “After much searching through my col- closely, examine sequences of events, com- information and agreed to let me share it with lection, I have finally found the one Koda- pare and contrast objects and events observed, you. Thank you Steve! chrome slide that I took of that planetarium make predictions and justify them, and then Steve said, “This may only be known to with a penny sitting besides the starball to adjust conclusions based on observations. MAPS members as this planetarium was pre- give a size scale. I am sure many of these script-writing steps miered at the MAPS conference in Durham, “As you can see in the photo, there were are similar to the steps taken by any planetar- New Hampshire in 1978. The students at the two switches that controlled the planetari- ium director. The focus of these tips, however, local school, which I believe was the Huckle- um. Although not very readable in the pho- is on education and participatory techniques: berry Hill kindergarten, built it. (The presenter to, the switch on the left says ‘projector, and •• Target the age/grade level and then pick a told us that the school also had a glow in the was just a simple on/off toggle. The switch on topic that is exciting and aligns with cur- dark ‘planetarium’ built into a closet under a the right is labeled ‘stars,’ and was a ‘dimmer’ rent school, state or national standards or flight of stairs. It was a whole solar system that switch that, when turned clockwise, made the curriculum. lit up under black light.) stars brighter.” •• Analyze what you can do in a planetarium “The entire planetarium was about the size Contact Information: Steven L.J. Russo, di- that cannot be duplicated in the classroom of a shoebox and the actual dome was about rector, East Kentucky Science Center & Plane- or with a video. Use that as one of the pri- 8 inches (20 centimeters) across. The star ma- tarium, Big Sandy Community and Technical mary purposes for developing the lesson chine, which looked like a Spitz A1 or A2, was College, One Bert T. Combs Drive, Prestons- script. made out of cardboard, and the ‘starball’ was burg, Kentucky 41653; [email protected]; •• Define and write a list of objectives. Keep only about an inch (2.5 cm) or so across. www.bigsandy.kctcs.edu/eksc. them simple, precise and with measurable “The amazing part of it was that it actual- outcomes. ly worked. There was a tiny light bulb in the Back to Basics III-Script Writing •• Compile a vocabulary list of words and starball that was run off of a battery, and holes In my December column I discussed some terms. Words may have one meaning for were punched in the ball in the shape of the basic presentation techniques, and in March scientists and another for the public. Make sure you identify these words and make it a point to define them when writing the script and presenting the lesson. •• Research, design and list age‑appropriate activities that can be done in the planetarium to promote your students’ discoveries and that lead to achieving the above objectives. •• Develop a time‑line for all questions/activities, and judiciously choose any special effects that will fit into the length of lesson that you desire. Limit the number of special effects and use each only once to enhance the dramatic impact. Most of my lessons are designed to fit into 30- to 40-minute blocks of time. •• Make an outline or storyboard of the final sequence of events and demonstrations. Write a full script, word for word, even if you never use that exact script. This process clarifies your thoughts and helps when you practice the lesson. The world’s smallest planetarium was premiered at the MAPS conference in Durham, New Hampshire Truthfully, I never follow my script word USA in 1978. In this picture, the dome is removed and set off to the left. A USA penny coin is place next for word when I actually present it. I like flex- to the planetarium for scale. Photo by Steven Russo

60 Planetarian June 2012 Left: IPS Tips for Script Writing: a good source of advice, from working planetarians, about the process of script writing for fixed and mobile domes. Center: The Portable Planetarium Handbook, a source of some unique ideas and some good lesson plans written by your colleagues. Right: Educar con el Planetario, a source for Spanish-speaking planetarians and teachers. ibility because each class is unique and can as possible. Students remember better if they edge can help make their lives more comfort- drive the lesson in a slightly different direc- have thought through and learned a concept able. tion, depending on student questions and well enough to verbalize it. This is also a meth- You can ask questions such as, “When you abilities. od for keeping tabs on what is being under- get up in the morning do you want the sun to I make sure I have a full “bag of tricks” to stood and can reveal a “teachable moment” or come through your window and wake you up fall back on and, if it is a new lesson, I keep an inform you about when to challenge miscon- or do you hate getting up with the sun? Keep- outline and a list of important related facts ceptions. ing this in mind, when buying or building handy as a reference to keep me on track. The Keep the humor age‑appropriate and pos- your house, ideally where would you want same topic may be presented in many differ- itive. Nothing is more deadly than adult hu- your bedroom to be located in the house de- ent ways. This is dependent on the class atti- mor used inappropriately. Negative humor sign? Why?” tudes and experiences. and sarcasm set a tone that is not conducive Research, design, collect and print pre‑ to learning and promotes misbehavior. Sources of planetarium scripts and post-planetarium visit activities or com- Design and print lesson evaluation sheets If you need some fresh ideas or someone to ments to be distributed to the teachers or stu- for the teachers and students. provide a lesson plan for you, there are three dents. An excellent resource for this part of As an aside and something to think about sources that might interest you. You can make your planning is The Universe at Your Finger- when creating and marketing lessons for var- the lessons “your own” with some simple edits tips 2.0, a collection of activities and resourc- ious venues, don’t forget the non-science ma- where you feel they are necessary. es for teaching astronomy, edited by Andrew jors. 1. IPS Portable Planetarium Handbook, July Fraknoi and available through the Astronom- With that in mind, this comment was re- 2002 (Available through IPS Publications ical Society of the Pacific. The collection, pre- cently posted to Dome-L by Steve Fentress Committee) viously available in print, is now on DVD- ([email protected]) from the Strasen- 2. Planetarium Activities for Student Suc- ROM . www.astrosociety.org/uayf. burgh Planetarium, Rochester, New York. He cess: The Lawrence Hall of Science website ex- Collect materials needed for the lesson. De- stated, “A basic planetarium show about day, plains their P.A.S.S. series: “Designed for both sign a way to carry these items in the most night and the seasons should be part of the ed- experienced planetarium instructors and compact container you can find. Save your ucation of anyone going into architecture, teachers using a planetarium for the first time, back by keeping the weight down. building, or landscape design—that’s one of this series provides a wealth of ready-to-go Remember, “less is more.” Do not try to the ideas I’ve been pushing. ideas and practical suggestions for planning cram a list of facts into the lesson. It is better “Here’s a beautiful essay supporting my and presenting entertaining and educational- to aim for student understanding and (pos- point, by western New York architect Rick ly effective programs for students.” sibly) mastering of one or two concepts in Hauser. It originally appeared in the Livings- Two of the programs are available at no 30 minutes. They can memorize facts in the ton County (New York) News. I particularly cost: Moons of the Solar System and Strange classroom. like his rant about a “McMansion-type” house: Planets. www.planetarium-activities.org The steps and process of discovery are ex- ‘It overlooks everything. It relates to nothing.’ 3. Digitalis Education Solutions has 17 free tremely important and fun for the student. (insitearch.com/blog/2012/03/19/spring-mus- astronomy lessons, available in both English Teaching people to focus, observe, and record ings-design-for-the-seasons-puts-nature-at- and Spanish, on their website. These lessons observations accurately is a challenge. Be care- the-center)” are written for a variety of age groups and al- ful; it is easy to fall into the habit of repeating This is an eloquently-written article and though designed for a Digitarium planetar- “sound bites” after you have presented the les- certainly makes the argument. ium projector, they can be modified for use son several times. When teaching the seasons and day and with different planetarium systems. digitalise- Guiding students through the process in night lessons, all students can be asked ques- ducation.com/curricula.html which they actively construct new ideas or tions that lead them to comprehend why they If you are new to IPS and are a Spanish- concepts is more entertaining for them and should understand directional sky events (sun speaking educator, there is one more resource for you! rise, sunset, altitude of the sun at noon and du- for you. This IPS document, also on CD, is Ask people to verbalize thoughts as much ration of the sun’s path). This kind of knowl- (Continues on Page 64)

June 2012 Planetarian 61 ally like to find out if others have discovered Book Reviews books written in this vein, and whether they have recommended them to a young audience.

Patrick Moore’s Data Book April S. Whitt of Astronomy Fernbank Science Center Patrick Moore and Robin Rees, eds. Cambridge 156 Heaton Park Drive NE University Press, 2011, New York, New York, Atlanta, Georgia 30307 USA 10013, ISBN 978-0-521-89935-2 [email protected] Reviewed by Bruce L. Dietrich, Wyomiss- ing, Pennsylvania, USA. Sir Patrick, a past president of the British As- constellation. Likewise the Eskimo Nebula in Space tronomy Association and the only amateur Gemini, where we see a pair of hooded faces, Silver Dolphin Press, San Diego, California, astronomer with membership in the IAU, has but not the nebula or its location. 2009, ISBN 13: 978-1-60710-122-2 written more than 70 major books on astron- Also, the brightest star in each group is stat- Reviewed by Francine Jackson, Universi- omy. For more than 50 years he has presented ed, in addition to its magnitude and its celes- ty of Rhode Island Planetarium, Providence, the world’s longest running television series, tial coordinates. Rhode Island, USA. “The Sky at Night” on BBC. Now, granted, this book is listed as for ages 8 Have you ever checked out the book tables Patrick Moore was the founding director of and up, and both magnitude and coordinates of your local warehouse-type store? It was the Armagh Planetarium, patron to the South are each given their own bullet pages, but this there that I found Space. What attracted me to Downs Planetarium and Science Centre, and seems like information a young person might it was its 3-dimensioned cover of an astronaut now, at 89, is certainly the best known and not need at this time, especially as the posi- floating above the Earth. most effective advocate of popular astrono- tion of the brightest star is not on the constel- On purchasing it and taking it home, I no- my in the British Isles. lation itself. ticed something unusual: there were no listed His Data Book of Astronomy is much more Especially baffling is the fact that the ma- authors. The closest I could find was the list of than a comprehensive compilation of black jority of the illustrations within Space are contributors, nestled under the normal direc- and white charts and tables; it has extensive not photos. Almost all of them are drawings, tor/designer column. explanatory narrative with very strong sec- which are quite good, but in I looked into the book itself tions for both history and biography. This up- an astronomy book for any and discovered that, although to-date reference book contains extensive in- age, it seems there should be there were several topics listed, formation on the solar system, all type of stars such as Exploring Space, The enough real photos out there and galaxies, telescopes and observatories, and Universe, The Solar System, to fill the need for images. those conditions which influence our seeing. etc., each chapter in the topic There are a couple unforgiv- The star catalog section alone has 132 pag- was only two pages long. The able errors, including the bold es of information about all the constella- subjects weren’t broken into but misspelled introduction tions. The glossary and index are of the cali- paragraphs; each fact within to “Horoligium,” and the ref- ber which one has come to expect in a book the heading was listed as a bul- published under the aegis of Cambridge Uni- let point. versity Press. For example, “Space Probes” The perspective from the history of the uni- contains the following: verse and those who have written and contin- “Space can be explored us- ue to write it is masterful. Although the book ing probes—unmanned, auto- is available in e-format, it is wonderful in the matic, computed-controlled hardbound edition because of the rapid, easy spacecraft.” interleaving between tabular and text presen- “The first successful planetary probe was… erence to the tations. Mariner 2…” Ring Nebula, As I was about to shelve this massive tome “Viking 1 and 2 landed on Mars in 1976.” the paragraph in my library, an old favorite reference book The next two pages concentrate on Voyag- of which is came to hand, J.B. Sidgwick’s Amateur Astron- er 1 and 2, followed by two pages on the Space written to in- omer’s Handbook, published in 1956 and re- Shuttle, which, because this was written in fer that its viewed in the Journal of the British Interplan- 2009, talks about its future end in 2010, fol- name is Ly- etary Society by Patrick Moore. lowed by its replacement, Orion, in 2014. rae, and it is listed as “M31.” At that time he wrote: “For some time there This book does contain a little bit of every- I went to the website for this publisher, has been a need for a book which would fill thing, including all 88 of the constellations, and found other books that seemed to be of the gap between the ‘popular’ works dealing each with a tiny myth (some different from the same type. I’m kind of at a loss as to what with astronomical instruments, and the high- any I had ever heard) and a fascinating win- to make of this as a learning tool. Am I so out ly technical volumes beyond the grasp of the dow, very often referring to a subject related of touch that now learning must be broken average amateur, J.B. Sidgwick’s book is there- to the constellation picture, rather than the down into two-page bullet-point information fore most welcome, particularly in view of its star picture. packets? Are we going to have to begin teach- excellence. The Author is to be congratulated For example, in Cepheus, we learn of Her- ing as if we’re twittering, a sentence at a time? upon this fine work.” schel’s garnet star, but we see a red ring, rath- Perhaps the young potential amateur as- Indeed! In regard to Patrick Moore’s Data er than the position of the star within the tronomer can learn by this method, but I’d re- Book of Astronomy, I could not say it better.

62 Planetarian June 2012 June 2012 Planetarian 63 Eye & Telescope version 3.0: ject. With information the user enters, selec- that comes with the DVD is used to acquire a tions are filtered by object type, telescope, lo- license code from the web site. The Deep Sky Observing Planner cation, and so on. The installation is tied to the user’s name Cambridge University Press, 2011, New York , This software takes some time to get to and email address; the advantage to this is that New York, 10013, DVD-ROM, 978-0-521-15115-3 know. The user should read all the documen- you can install the program on more than one Reviewed by Steve Bieger, Ralph Buice Me- tation and the online help files to get a full un- system, so the user can choose to run one copy morial Observatory, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. derstanding of the complexity of the package on a laptop for field use and another copy in- Cambridge University Press has released review of the package features is recommend- side on a desktop system. There are even in- version 3 of its Eye & Telescope Deep Sky Ob- ed, features which are thoroughly document- structions in the documentation to easily serving Planner. The software runs on the Win- ed on the support website, www. copy files back and forth between the two sys- dows platform and is com- eyeandtelescope.com. tems to keep them in sync. patible with versions 98SE, The manual is available as a It’s a good idea to browse the online help 2000, XP, Vista and Win- PDF file from the site as well as early on the learning process. The first seven dows 7. information on recent updates. As the program title sug- sections of the online manual cover the basics gests, E&T is a planning There is also a FAQ and support in a little more detail than the printed manu- tool. Its main purpose is to forum. al. However, getting to know these fundamen- help the user research deep The package comes with a tals will save a lot of time later on. sky objects for observa- printed manual that is more of There are three tours at the end of the on- tion and then plan for and an overview. Most important: line manual. It’s highly recommended to go track those observations the manual has the serial num- through these as a way to introduce the var- in minute detail. ber printed on the back sheet, so ious dialog boxes and displays. The text and This software allows don’t lose this or you won’t be examples in the tours are liberally accompa- binocular and telescope able to activate the program’s full nied with hyperlinks to other parts of the on- users to set up an observ- features. line text. ing plan, aided by a da- Installation uses a DVD format, With a program like this, it is tempting to tabase of 130,000 entries. so you must have a DVD reader just dive in and try to “figure it out.” Admit- The user can select from a list of observable on your PC. There are approximately 1.8 GB tedly, this proved to be very inefficient. Read objects for a single night or can identify the of images with the package and the entire in- first to save time later. I next opportunity for viewing a specific ob- stall takes up about 2.5 GB. The serial number

(Mobile News, Continued from Page 61) called Educar Con el Planetario, published in skills and techniques for live lessons during you wish to be considered for this experience. 2005. Dr. Pedro Saizar explains, “This manu- their presentations. They will share informa- You must also include the text of a 60-min- al is intended for all those who wish to learn tion about available resources and products ute lesson plan, with activities and stories that more about the world of planetariums espe- and also present and brainstorm ideas for im- you would like to present for students. cially the small mobile instruments. In partic- proving programs in a stationary dome, with Planetarians are encouraged to apply many ular, it is important to: planetarians interested an outreach planetarium program, or in a pri- times, remembering “if at first you don’t suc- in improving their presentations; teachers of vate mobile dome business. ceed, try, and try again.” You can always ask any discipline who wish to use the planetar- For more information and to register, go to for comments from us about how to make ium as an educational tool; and teachers, ad- lipsymposium.org your application stronger. vanced amateurs, professionals in museums Send your application to: Loris Ramponi, or others who are thinking about work in or Reminder: Deadlines Approaching Osservatorio Serafino Zani, Via Bosca 24, with a planetarium.” Pay attention to the yearly deadline for ap- 25066 Lumezzane, Italy. Email: info@serafino- plications for A Week in Italy. This exciting zani.it or [email protected] I LIPS Conference, 7-9 Aug 2012 opportunity has been offered since 1995 and The second LIPS Conference will take place we are grateful to all the planetarians in Ita- on.fb.me/PlanetariumTweets August 7-9, 2012 at the University of Notre ly who enable us to continue to provide such Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana. a life altering experience to some very gifted Keith Davis, who oversees the University of educators. Real tweets about real planetariums Notre Dame’s Digital Visualization Theater, Deadlines: Mario DiMaggio will be the host this time around. The 136-seat •• 31 August. Deadline for the applicants of Digital Visualization Theater is 15.3 meters “An experience in Italy for a French Speak- •• The Planetarium in Greenwich today in diameter. The projection system is a Sky- ing Planetarium Operator.” claimed certainty our star the Sun will kiss Skan multi-projector definiti system. science. •• 15 September. Deadline for the applicants of our Earth surface not if but when and with nd.edu/jordan/about/digital-visualization- “A Week in Italy for an American Planetar- fiery passion. theater.shtml ium Operator.” •• fell asleep in the planetarium. i feel ashamed This conference will be conducted in a par- •• 30 September. Deadline for the applicants to call myself a geek ticipatory manner with the primary focus on of “An experience in Italy for a British Plan- •• A Late Night At The Planetarium Would Be the goals of professional development and etarium Operator.” Sensual & Soothing ! networking with other professionals who Participants must send an application that •• This is a planetarium not a Bangkok brothel present live interactive planetarium and sci- includes full name, complete address, year of so behave your self ence programs. birth and curriculum vitae. Send this informa- •• the lemons move down from the tree’s Participants and vendors alike will model tion along with a cover letter explaining why planetarium

64 Planetarian June 2012 Waxing New An eclectic collection about planetariums, products and people compiled by Sharon Shanks

Check Out . . . ing shows by title, all that start with “A,” like The Fulldome Database (www.fddb.org), A Traveler’s Guide to Mars, are listed under A. a social-media driven database for all things The same thing with shows that start with fulldome. It is the idea of Dario Tiveron in Pa- “The;” they’re all under T. Following conven- dova, Italy, and is independent of vendors and tional alphabetization that ignores the arti- video production companies. “Our main goal cles will help the site’s usefulness. In March, when the sun unleashed the most intense is to create an exciting and friendly commu- radiation storm since 2003, peppering satellites with nity that will stimulate the overall fulldome High-flying planetarian charged particles and igniting strong auroras around Dan Ruby from the Fleischmann Planetari- both poles, a group of Bishop Union High School stu- creativity,” and it does that by welcoming pri- dents in Bishop, California, knew just what to do. vate companies, planetariums, independent um and Science Center in Reno, Nevada, was They launched a rubber chicken. The students used filmmakers, students, and anyone interested among 26 educators from the United States se- a helium balloon to send “Camilla” to an altitude of to freely add content. It has more than 200 lected for research flights aboard SOFIA, NA- 120,000 feet, where she was exposed to high-energy solar protons at point blank range in a test flight for fulldome shows already listed. SA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared future astrobiology missions. An earlier flight sent Astronomy. The educators will partner with The database is show-oriented and search- Camilla into the atmosphere to obtain base readable by a number of criteria: genre, content, professional astronomers using SOFIA for sci- ings during a period of calm solar weather; the sec- format, target audience, and more. Once con- entific observations in 2012 and 2013. ond flight’s readings during the radiation storm will nected to a show, everything you can need SOFIA is a modified Boeing 747SP jetliner be compared and studied. The payload, in addition equipped with a 100-inch (2.5-meter) diam- to radiation badges on Camilla’s “space suit,” was is there: links to the trailer and full show (if packed in a modified school lunch and included four available), a precise description, all show de- eter telescope. The observatory enables the cameras, a cryogenic thermometer, and two GPS tails (running time, audience), technical spec- analysis of infrared light to study the forma- trackers. Seven insects and two dozen sunflower ifications (video format available, languages). tion of stars and planets; chemistry of inter- seeds also rode along to test their response to near- space travel. Camilla is the mascot of NASA’s Solar I was amazed at the number of programs stellar gases; composition of comets, asteroids Dynamics Observatory, and parachuted safey back and planets; and supermassive black holes at from around the world already on the data- to Earth after her flight. From NASA Science News; base, and have one suggestion: when view- the center of galaxies. I photo credit: Earth to Sky-Bishop, California.

June 2012 Planetarian 65 Planetarians’ Calendar of Events

2012 5-7 October. Immersive Film Festival (IFF), Espinho, Portugal. Orga- 21-22 June. Tecnoplanetario 2012, Spanish and Portugal Plane- nization Navegar Foundation. Contact: Lina Canas, lina@mul- tarium Meeting, Parc Astronòmic Montsec, Àger, Lleida, Spain. timeios.pt Contact: [email protected], www.parcastronomic.cat 3-16 October. Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) 11-15 July. ESOF 2012, Euroscience Open Forum, Dublin City of Sci- Annual Conference, COSI (Center of Science and Industry), Co- ence 2012, www.dublinscience2012.ie lumbus, Ohio. www.astc.org 20-21 July. International Planetarium Society Council Meeting, 24-27 October. Great Lakes Planetarium Association (GLPA), annu- Baton Rouge, Louisiana. al conference, North Hills High School Planetarium, Pittsburgh, 21-22 July. Southeastern Planetarium Association (SEPA), 2012 Pennsylvania, USA. Contact: Susan Batson. www.glpaweb.org conference, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA (in conjunction with 16-17 November 2012. FULLDOME UK, The National Space Cen- IPS Conference). www.sepadomes.org tre, Leicester, United Kingdom. Contact: [email protected], 22-26 July. 21st International Planetarium Society Confer- www.fulldome.org.uk ence, Irene W. Pennington Planetarium, Louisiana Art & Science Museum, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA, jelvert@ 2013 lasm.org, www.ips2012.com. IPS conference will Ustream the 17 March. International Day of Planetaria. www.dayofplanetaria. opening ceremony, keynote speaker, business meeting, and pa- org per sessions each day. www.ips-planetarium.org, link on IPS April. Italian Association of Planetaria (PLANIT), XXVIII National 2012, Baton Rouge Conference, Italy, and 3rd FullDome Italian Festival. During the 27-28 July. DomeFest, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. www. conference Skype session for planetarians from other countries. domefest.org www.planetaritaliani.it. Contact: [email protected] 4-8 August. Communicating Science: A National Conference on 6-8 September. Nordic Planetarium Association Biennial Confer- Education and Public Outreach, annual meeting of the Astro- ence, AHHAA Science Center, Tartu, Estonia. Conference lan- nomical Society of the Pacific, Hilton Hotel, Tucson, Arizo- guage English. Contact: Margus Aru, [email protected] na, USA. Contact: Andrew Fraknoi, [email protected], 16-19 October. Great Lakes Planetarium Association (GLPA), Annu- www.astrosociety.org/events/meeting.html al conference, Peoria Riverfront Museum, Peoria, Illinois, USA. 7-9 August. Live Interactive Planetarium Symposium, University Contact: [email protected] www.glpaweb.org of Notre Dame, Jordan Hall of Science and Digital Visualization 19-22 October. Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) Theater, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. Contact: Keith Davis, Direc- Annual Conference, Explora, NM Museum of Natural History & tor the Digital Visualization Theater. [email protected], or Science, National Museum of Nuclear Science & History, Albu- call at (574) 631-3952, http://LIPSymposium.org querque, New Mexico, USA. www.astc.org 6-10 August. Spitz Summer Institute, Spitz, Inc. Chadds Ford (near Philadelphia), Pennsylvania, USA, annual event focusing on 2014 planetarium education. Includes instruction in Starry Night 16-20 March. Science Center World Summit, Technopolis, Mech- real time software, curriculum and live lessons/teaching with elen and Brussels, Belgium. Partners: Technopolis, Flemish sci- SciDome digital planetariums. Beginner, intermediate and ad- ence center, Mechelen, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sci- vanced sessions. www.spitzinc.com/institute ences, Brussels. www.technopolis.be 31 August. Deadline for the applicants of “An experience in Italy 31 March. Deadline for application for scholarship funds (IPS sup- for a French Speaking Planetarium Operator”, in collaboration port, Beijing Conference attendance by individuals). www.ips- with APLF. http://www.astrofilibresciani.it/Planetari/Week_ planetarium.org in_Italy/Week_Italy.htm June. International Planetarium Society Council Meeting, Beijing, 7-8 September. British Association of Planetaria (BAP), annual China. meeting, National Space Centre, Leicester, United Kigdom. Con- 23-27 June. 22nd International Planetarium Society Confer- tact: Dr Jenny Shipway, [email protected] ence, Beijing Planetarium, China. www.ips2014.org, contact 15 September. Deadline for the applicants of “A Week in Italy for Dr. Zhu Jin, [email protected] an American Planetarium Operator”, in collaboration with IPS 18-21 October. Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) Portable Planetarium Committee. http://www.astrofilibres- Annual Conference, North Carolina Museum of Natural Scienc- ciani.it/Planetari/Week_in_Italy/Week_Italy.htm es, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. www.astc.org 18-20 September. Giant Screen Cinema Association (GSCA), Inter- national Conference and Trade Show, Esquire IMAX Theatre, For corrections and new information for the Calendar of Events, Sacramento, California, USA. September 21. Dome Day, The please send a message to Loris Ramponi at osservatorio@serafino- Tech Museum, San Jose, California, USA. www.giantscreencin- zani.it. ema.com More details about several of these upcoming events are includ- 21 September. Dome Day, The Tech Museum, San Jose, California, ed in the International News column and elsewhere in the Plane- USA. www.giantscreencinema.com tarian. 2-5 October. Workshop in Immersive Cinema (WIC), Espinho, Por- The most up-to-date information also is available online at the tugal. Organization Navegar Foundation. Contact: Lina Canas, International Planetarian’s Calendar of Events at www.ips-plane- [email protected] tarium.org/events/conferences.html I

66 Planetarian June 2012 Join a family of aliens searching for the perfect vacation spot in the solar system. Available February 20. Contact Mike Murray at [email protected] 385-468-1237 • clarkplanetarium.org/distribution June 2012 Planetarian 67

5032-3_Clark_PerfectLittlePlanet_8.5x11.indd 1 1/20/12 2:26 PM from his scheduled nap and mistook Venus Last Light for an oncoming planet. Ah, no, that last “t” shouldn’t be there. He thought it was a plane. So, as CNN dives into it, he pressed the appropriate buttons and levers and took avoid- April S. Whitt ing action. Yes, he sent the plane ground ward. Fernbank Science Center One can only imagine what the poor pas- 156 Heaton Park Drive NE sengers must have thought—14 of them were injured (all in coach), as well as two members Atlanta, Georgia 30307 USA of the flight crew. [email protected] The Transportation Safety Board of Can- ada’s report explains that the Boeing 767-333 With the end of the world fast approaching, tion. All seemed calm and I turned back to the was halfway across the Atlantic in complete it’s time to peruse some internet stories, dear ‘scope with a heartbeat slowly coming back darkness. readers. Fireballs, animals in astronomy, and to normal...to notice the lightning bug crawl- The language it uses to describe the dive is that pesky planet Venus again… ing across the corrector plate as he gazed am- very beautiful. It calls the experience “a 46-sec- orously at his reflection in the mirror below! ond pitch excursion,” as if this was something From Larry Brown’s Homemade everyone had booked months in advance. Astronomy web site From Kevin Jung “What are you doing for your vacation?” My son and I were en route to a music store About 10 years ago we were observing with “Oh, I’m going on a pitch excursion.” called MARS, the musicians’ resource. It’s a portable telescopes in front of our observa- “Really? That sounds like fun.” huge discount store selling guitars and amps tory late one summer night. My friend had a In this particular instance, the captain was and musical accessories. We were on 71 North home-built 10-inch dob that was his pride and expecting a little turbulence. The seat belt when I suddenly saw something that looked joy, and he was using it to rack up several hun- sign had been turned on. Moreover, when the like an airplane coming down in flames. Then dred more galaxies that night. first officer woke up—having slept for 75 min- I realized it wasn’t coming down. It was trav- At one point I had went in- eling in a straight line across the sky from the side to check out something in west to the east, throwing off flaming debris a book, and he to use the facil- in green, red, and yellow colors. ities, and after a while we both It seemed to move rather slowly across the returned to the great outdoors. sky. Traffic on the freeway literally stopped. A short time later a strange People pulled over and climbed out of their scratching-type noise was cars to stare at it in amazement. heard emanating from the area. When we finally got to MARS, I immedi- We stopped and looked around ately called the local television station and for the source, but to no avail. asked if they had been getting reports about After several minutes and more a fireball. The woman who answered said noises, Bruce looked around his that they were swamped with calls. I told her telescope, and then lifted the that I was an amateur astronomer and could tube from its base. probably give her a fairly objective descrip- Underneath the telescope, And it’s “last flight” for Discovery, which now rests in the Smithsonian tion of the fireball. “That’s great!” she said. sitting somewhat uncomfort- Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Photo by aviation “Exactly where were you when you saw it?” ably in the base, was a huge rac- photographer James D. Blohm, used with permission. “We were on our way to MARS,” I said. coon. It looked up and hissed at She hung up on me. us, and then Bruce kicked over his scope base to get the raccoon out, which utes—he reported feeling unwell. From Alain Maury of Observatoire made it angry, and it started chasing us around It is not known why he was unwell. How- de Haute-Provence in France the yard. We ran into the building and closed ever, the report points to him having trouble A pigeon once flew into the 1.93-m tele- the door, lest the monster gain entrance. getting enough sleep, now that he had chil- scope tube at Haute Provence Observatory. After a while it was quiet, and we ventured dren. This stupid animal was seeing stars both ways outside. The raccoon had gone up into a tree The captain had warned him that there was (up and down in the mirror) and decided to about 20 feet away, and stayed there all night a U.S. Air Force C-17 in the area. When the first try its way out through the mirror, which be- hissing and cursing at us in typical raccoon officer woke up, he saw a bright light in front came covered with feathers and pigeon crap. fashion. That night has become known as the of him, believed it to be the C-17. The captain The mirror was cleaned the following day. Be- “Night of the Raccoon from Hell.” told him it wasn’t. In fact, the C-17 was below ware of pigeons. them. From Chris Matyszczyk, CNET news This was, indeed, Venus. From Sandy at AstroBloopers We’ve all driven down a road, looked away, The first officer, though, was unconvinced One beautiful summer night I was quiet- looked back and mistaken a bear for the and initiated the dive. The captain corrected ly observing with the C-8 in the back yard Abominable Snowman. Or a Toyota Prius for it, but not before passengers and crew began when a bright yellow/orange light sudden- a car. to fly. ly filled the eyepiece. Startled, I jumped back However, when you’re in the air, slight er- The reports declare that there is an inherent from the telescope and scanned the horizon rors of visual comprehension might be mag- risk with every nighttime transatlantic flight. to locate the source of the explosion, know- nified. Darkness simply makes pilots sleepy. And ing that there was a nuclear power plant lo- For it seems that an Air Canada pilot, on when you’re sleepy, strange things can hap- cated about 32 kilometers south of my loca- his way from Toronto to Zurich, woke up pen. I

68 Planetarian June 2012

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