Gather Up Your Memories

 I asked Ken Miller of California if he had any pictures of his grandfathers old buildings he used to build, like I do my crazy planetarium structures (long on passion, short on skill)  He answered :

Sadly, I'm not sure if there are any pictures at all.  There may be one or two, but I'll have to dig through a lot of stuff to see.  You never realize what you will treasure down the road, and wish that you had tried to record in some way.  I passed by my grandfather's old place a few months ago, and there is nothing but bare ground, and no evidence that anything of value ever existed there.  It is the place of a thousand memories, and a wellspring of inspiration.  It may be gone, but I can try to do my part to pay it forward by trying to give some of that inspiration to the next generations, just like you are doing.
[/quote]


Its a good subject.  My son has flat out told me when I'm gone these buildings GO, so I'm making it easy for him maybe!  A more permanent structure could always been used for some other purpose when we're gone, chances are probably the next generation won't want a planetarium, I think we have to face that don't we?   But YES.. Ken's captured that yearning .. that VALUE that so may people lose because its just old stuff ..     gather up your old pictures while you can and document them - every time I visit my old daddy in Florida I look for more of them - so many on Facebook etc have NONE.    Paying inspiration forward I guess doesn't have to be in exactly the same currency - our children may see our passion in building crazy things chasing dreams, and they may put those principles to work on their OWN dreams, whatever they may be!

The Paradox of Planetariums

I looked to none other than the Romantic Poets to find a paradox in planetariums as I have experienced and loved them.   The Romantics somehow captured the simultaneous presence of isolation and community in their words, the stillness of death and the motion of life.   The stars have stillness and loneliness, and the stars have breath and humanity.   The stars as we experience and think about them ARE just such a paradox, and the planetarium can capture this contradiction perfectly.   Thoreau built a cabin to experience solitude, yet he was a mile outside Concord, entertained frequent visitors, and even walked into town whenever he felt like it.   So too can experience both alone and together in a planetarium.     But most public planetariums do the alone thing in a group setting.   Nobody there gets to TRULY be by themselves contemplating the projected heavens - they are shoulder to shoulder with fellow beings.  Each patron of a public show indeed may live in his own mind, and the sights and sounds experienced there may truly stir the inner self.   Yet its only in your OWN planetarium, as under the night sky on some distant hillside, can you really be alone with the stars.  Then you can live the paradox .. alone - and yet you know what you are seeing is the same thing all recorded history saw for the most part.   Your community is not those fellows in the seats next to you - your community is all of humanity for all its history.    It would seem to me then, there are only two ways to really live what the Romantic Poets described - that simultaneous presence of true isolation and total community.  Under the stars themselves alone - or in your OWN planetarium!  

Requiem for a HeavyWeight

Requiem for a Heavyweight - HPA Blog Entry

Its an old Rod Serling title, he of Twilight Zone fame, and the TZ is where I've found myself in my first two planetarium visits in decades.    A grad school tour for my son to Chapel Hill found me in the Moorehead, which I came to realize was perhaps one of the big five of all time (all time!) in the US, the closest thing to Adler this old Chicago boy (62-68) was going to get without traveling to any coastal megacities.  Then I went to my idyllic middle of nowhere extreme western Kentucky Land Between the Lakes planetarium and something similar happened.

I didn't see any stars on either trip.   I saw cartoons.  Talking heads floating in space, bullying our sun.  I saw demoted Pluto hanging with his new mate Ceres, wondering why Jupiter and Saturn disowned him. Maybe Pluto can hook up with Gimli, since he's now a dwarf?  I saw skies that looked more like Van Gogh paintings than pinpoints of light.   The heavyweight Zeiss and the welterweight Spitz machines had been KOed by video. But nobody cared.  The kids didn't.  They weren't bound for the out of doors anyway, or if they were it was organized camp.  

Plenty of good information, too much really in both shows.  I found the talking star who was getting ready to explode even sadder than she was depicted - she was about to give birth to heavier elements (naturally it had to be a she didn't it), as if stars have genders - why would that make any star sad?

Kids clapped, they learned, on to the next digital time byte.  Its keeping alive the planetariums.  I tried to watch the video of the Moorehead Zeiss (youtube) .. pieces of it anyway, being carried into the office but I choked up.  Requiem for a Heavyweight.   I don't think anyone even knows where it went.  There's treasure hunters out there right now looking for classic planetarium machines.  Nobody knows where they went!

Its all good.   I reserve the right to be a little sad though, like that exploding star.   As for me, in memory of the heavyweights, the welterweights, I'll keep punching with home planetariums.   And try to keep moving. 

Nobody's going to knock me out.  At least that's the plan.

Why a Philosophy?

I qualified my Planetarium book as a Philosophy and Practice because for everything I built in the way of home planetariums, the BUILDING was but the tip of this enormous iceberg of THOUGHT.  Indeed, I could soak in the idea of planetariums in my house long before I knew how to achieve them.  Therefore, a kind of philosophy developed to explain WHY I wanted to do this.   Take other pursuits, this may not be that unusual.  Say you love to go fishing.   The philosophy behind fishing is what ..   its totally removed from everyday life..   its not necessarily goal oriented - most of the fishing I did with my father growing up was not about catching fish - we did it anyway, because its what we DID.  It was a way of life.  I grew up expecting to go fishing on vacation .  We had a boat.  I couldnt imagine NOT having a boat.   Fishing wasnt just an activity. It was a philosophy.  Now I'm pretty sure my dad never once thought of it this way, and maybe neither did I at the time.  But now from the perspective of growing up and looking back over the decades to my youth, I can gradually see the overall shape of the activity.  Actually sitting in a boat wasnt all of it.  It wasnt even the best part.   The idea behind it was the thing.  

Home Planetariums evolved a philosophy for me.  It would take years of actually fishing, actually making them, before I could see the philosophy at work behind them.  But it was there.  Like the dark between the stars, it was everywhere!

Building a planetarium - the philosophy and practice

Lets imagine a world where the stars shine no more, you and I.  Its not so hard to do really, we are already well on the way to just such a place.  City lights, urban sprawl, digital motion pictures with CGI, anythings possible and we've already seen everything.  Who needs the stars?  My phone will navigate, theres no need for a North Star.   Greek mythology?  Google it.  Youtube is chockful of Hubble photographs, I can drive round Mars in the latest rover, I can probably go golfing with Albert Einstein.  The stars shine no more for a couple reasons ..  one, you couldn't see them even if you tried.  And two, nobody wants to try anyway.

But then lets imagine one day our curiosity gets the better of us.  Maybe we read of some starry nights in a romance novel.  Maybe we're studying history and we see an old painting of Magellan's ships under something called a Southern Cross, with two misty patches below it in the sky.  Maybe grandma tells of camping wayyy back and sitting round a campfire telling legends about Dippers and a Lady in a Chair, and all sorts of crazy images like that.    And we WANT to see the stars.  But not on the screen, in the sky.

But the real sky doesnt have them anymore.  Its washed with light.  Uninspiring.  We could wait till maybe that trip to the country next summer - try to see the stars then?   But then an idea hits us.   A crazy idea.  There are machines ... USED to be machines rather ..  that projected the stars in all their glory and splendor on a domed ceiling.  People would go - often in cities but in schools too ..  and see the stars as they used to be seen.  They were fantastic machines.  And fantastic theaters.  But didn't we go to one in our nearby city last summer?  It was cool, there were movies and magic treehouses and astronauts.  But nothing took our breath away.  Thats getting almost impossible to do anyway.

But these places and these machines both had the same name.  They were called P L A N E T A R I U M S.   A long word, and a complicated concept.  But such a simple, beautiful result .  the stars!  And they looked real.

So we thought, could we BUILD that, since nobody has them anymore?  What would it take?  And what kind of attitude, philosophy even, would it require of us?

Thats the subject of this book.   Building Planetariums.  At Home.  Both a philosophy and a practice.  Why?  Because of a profound belief that YES, YOU NEED ONE AT YOUR HOUSE!

From Veneration to Verite

I watched with a somewhat strange mixture of emotions as a giant banner was draped from the roof over the side of the Moorehead Planetarium, Chapel Hill, NC. Several new shows were beginning the next day, the day I was to make my first commercial planetarium visit in over 30 years. The planetarium world I had left so long ago was etched firmly in my mind, and I wondered if I would find it still waiting for me so many years later. I had my doubts as I noticed Big Bird featured prominently on the banner. So I asked myself a question. Planetariums in the intervening years had become entertainment emporiums surely, but were visitors learning anything? I went to one of the oldest planetariums in the USA looking for veneration. Ivied walls, impossibly complex optical monsters defiantly shining forth their analog splendor. I craved the hushed corridors with dim backlit spiral arms gleaming in fondly remembered night of my own past. I was all 50's and 60's Adler, visiting the Moorehead in the summer of 2012. Looking for the past, veneration, I found verite, or the candid truth in planetariums today. I think both can live. I started with what was still there from my old cherished memories of planetariums gone by. The building, it was old and classic. The gift shop full of wonders. So far so good. Traveling into the dome itself gave that same breathless feeling - and the Moorehead had a BIG BIG dome - moreso, this was a surprise because unlike alot of planetariums, you could not see the dome from the outside. The dome was not tilted to my relief. Tilted domes were too much for me, a symbol of our faint arrogance to alter nature to suit OUR comfort. But the chairs were not round the chamber, but oriented in a semi circle, implying a clear 'stage' area. Gone was that quirky 'ballpark' feeling where different seats had different views. A depressing 'no bad seat in the house' feeling always comes over me, insanely. I grew up going to shows in arcane old theaters - ballparks with posts, odd corners - here there was no feeling of .. I HAVE to go back and get a seat next time off third base, these rightfield seats are just arent that good! Here was dull uniformity. to be continued But back to my question, did they learn anything? 'Theres the Big Dipper', shouted a young girl as we walked post-show down the sidewalk outside, pointing up at seven stars on the giant banner draped over the building. I had my answer.

Eccentric Pursuits Require Eccentric Pursuers

Eccentric Pursuits Require Eccentric Pursuers Whats more rare, eccentric pieces of art, or the people who appreciate them? Rare equipment, or someone who will seek it out, preserve or restore it, and make it available? After having spent much of my adult life pursuing and build Home Planetaria, it at last began dawning on me that I didn’t want to be the ghost in Hill House - whatever walked in Hill House, walked alone. I didn’t want to be, whoever built planetariums, built them alone. I know that’s the basis for the myriad clubs and now internet boards in existence for like ‘birds of a feather to flock together’ as they used to say. But eccentric stuff requires eccentric people. Maybe even, it’s the people that MAKE it eccentric to begin with. Somebody dreamed it up. It just didn’t appeal to enough people to become common or mainstream. Or its time in the mainstream was quickly superseded by advances that rendered the commonplace for a day the eccentric in a decade or two (think keypunch machine). So eccentric pursuits need eccentric pursuers, to MAKE them eccentric.

Its Out There - Somewhere Everything surely has strengths and weaknesses. You buy a car, you don’t love everything about it. You compromise right? Relationships in life are like that .. You take a few bad things to get the really good things. I love my new iphone but there are a few things …. I’d change. Well the same is true for star balls. Building a planetarium isn’t like a home theater it seems. There, you get the projector, the screen, the popcorn machine, ROLL THEM .. Its done. A home planetarium, at least the HPA way, not so much. After a few years I have 4 star balls rolling round the place. I didn’t set out to have four. I’d really like six. Give me time. But they aren’t all the same. Not all star balls are created equal. This isn’t marriage. We can have more than one partner. You need one you built. From scratch if you would be a HPAer. Maybe not a a main ball, but at least some tin cans or PVC should be lurking somewhere in the theater. The pros used to be this way, before the digital curse I MEAN revolution. Look at old IPS guides, they were using tin cans, slide projectors, aluminum foil. Not anymore. A lost and dying art. You need to have put in some time on one. Maybe you don’t use this one so much with an audience. But maybe once in awhile you do, and you talk about what you made more than the stars it produces. The old commercial balls. The hybrids, old ball new mounting. They will all excell in SOMETHING. And they will all be not so good at something. Maybe that Dodecahedron shows the southern stars so well . Maybe the Spitz A3P has a detailed Milky Way that you just cant build ever. Maybe the home cylinder you bought just has more stars because a guy in Arizona spent 2 years drilling them in. Maybe you can have a greatest cylinder hits show for a single group of people. You will surely be tempted to build multiple domes to house them. Hopefully you’ll come to your senses on that one! But you will see the good and the not so good in each. Some of those Orions don’t look real. This one has an amazing Big Dipper. That one, I can’t even see Scorpio. Keep building, collecting, tweaking. You still don’t have a really good Andromeda Nebula. But its out there.. Somewhere. ….

Dont Let the Purpose Dictate the Space!

Single use places used to seem romantic to me, but then I realized they spent most of their lives sitting empty. That NFL football stadium used 7 times a year. The bowling alley. Golf Course. Planetarium .. Wait - not here. Build a planetarium and what do you have? A big room where the stars can come out. But it doesn’t have to be that way. My planetarium is a listening room. I fly radio controlled helicopters in there. I sleep in there. I film videos in there. Its multipurpose. A single purpose, at the amateur level, should never dictate the space. The space should allow many many purposes.

Meditations from a Planetarium

I wrote these journals over a 5 year period contemplating, building, and sitting in a planetarium of my own construction. But it could have been anything that time has passed by. A model T shed, where a shiny newfangled machine once wheezed after a days journey 2 miles into town. A gazebo on the village green, where brass bands used to play on sultry summer evenings. Instead I sit inside an unlikely shed behind a century old red oak barn with a shiny copper cylinder drilled with 899 star holes, awaiting some visitors. It took 4 years to dream it up before the 5 years to build it. During that time alot of crazy thoughts came to mind, so here's the journal of this building. This dreaming. This loving. It couldve been anything. But its a planetarium.

Monster Builders - You Can Be Dr Frankenst

Most people seem to take life as it comes at them, standard people living standard lives. Jobs, kids, relationships, hobbies, sports, restaurants, vacations. But then there are the monster builders. Modern day Dr Frankensteins that, well, create something out of spare parts, half seen dreams, alternate realities. Some Dr Frankensteie take it big .. From dorm rooms to Facebook, but most monster builders come in all sizes. What will YOUR legacy be, sure you may strive to be that ‘good’ father, mother figure.. Fun person, helper, missionary at church. And theres nothing wrong with living life the standard way. But why not also mix in a little of that eccentric uncle who built a radio receiver out of bowling balls? That dad who had the shortwave antennas strung in the yard trees like Christmas lights? They got to be standard happy people full of goodness truly. But they also, in their own unique way, got to be Dr Frankenstein too! I built a planetarium. What have you built, or dream of building?

Everyone has a 'Blog that Nobody Read'

Not everyone blogs, or in the old fashioned sense of the word keeps a journal or diary, but perhaps everyone has a trail of thoughts that they could have put down in some fashion, over the years, of some crazy dream. I believe that in our life passions lie may secrets to living in general, sometimes the more offbeat pursuit can lead to the most commonplace and universal reflections. So it was with me and a most obscure pursuit - I built and ran my own space theater or planetarium, an arcane and obscure activity that led to an incredibly diverse amount of reflection, thought, and activity. Literally 1000 hours of thought went into it, and along with the actual instrument and theater came these 100 blog posts. I called it ‘the blog nobody read’, so in the end I was left with postcards from the edge of an insanity really. What to do with them? I began to look behind them to see what were the hidden drivers - was the ‘dome’ for example literally a metaphor for heaven itself, a piece of curved nothingness lurking in the background of my conscious thought, illuminated only by the starlight of my own contrivance? And so it went each of the 100 forgotten posts had a seed, they must have had a source, a meaning that was perhaps able to be lifted out, dusted off, and applied more universally. It was worth trying. Otherwise, my Really Obscure Blog would have been in vain. After diligently and patiently revisiting each milestone contained within, perhaps TBNR was worthwhile after all. Like the voice of a river, or the voice of the God of your understanding, maybe it took time and effort to HEAR let alone understand. So like Sidarrtha before me, I sat beside this river of 100 thoughts cloaked in this most unlikely of pursuits, and tried to listen to what it was telling me. As it turns out, that was quite a lot! Come with me now down that stream, and maybe it will speak to you as well.

Lessons from Dr Frankenstein - Creating and Loving Your Own Monster

I finally read Mary Shelleys original 'Frankenstine', at last figuring I was letting Hollywood shape my literary roots instead of well you know, actually READING a classic or two. So naturally, this had to be applied to Planetariums, because.. it just does! Building a planetarium in a sense IS creating a monster. Assembling parts from places as obscure and arcane as Shelley says the prototype monster of all monster was created .. graveyards .. do you we not plunder the bygone junk yards of technology gone by? Dissecting rooms ... I have Spitz body parts littered throughout my infernal workshops.... And so I patched together this theater of wonder .. this room of dreams .. but now I wonder, is it indeed a monster? The reading in the original Frankenstine grows grimmer than I expected. The monster runs amuck and kills those who the good doctor loves .. Chases him, and he chases back in a kind of obsessive game of tag. Has this happened with my 'monster', this obscure dream that took on shape as this 8 foot moving creature. Do I obsessively chase it, or is it chasing me? Has it really been all good and in no part stifling to my other loves in some capacity? I know not that answer yet. But its out there now .. I find its uses to be thus far without end. It came to be, Frankenstine like, with a jolt of electricity - very low wattage in this case, but still the parallels are eerie. Dr Garenstein? What exactly HAVE I created? Its worth pondering...

Its the Light

How many of us enjoy paintings any more, we of the video age. There are starving artists, there are famous painters and paintings, yet in all probability it is the artist themselves that are more famous than their paintings. Rembrant. Picasso. Names more famous than their paintings (give or take a few Da Vinci's). But why, wasn't painting all about what was painted? Why do we dwell more on the reputation and fame of the artist? In a sense, the internet age has remedied this in a fashion, for we all can self publish at least our photographs and the focus will be back on the subject rendered, not ourselves. Photography, which basically replaced painting, at last has achieved a kind of parity where we all are on an equal playing field. But is it really about the object? Or is it about something even more elemental. Isn't it about the LIGHT? My planetarium will be an oxymoron almost - I will shut out 99.99 percent of the worlds light, so I can appreciate the other .01 percent - starlight. Cutting off light to appreciate light. Light was the basis for painting. It really is the basis for photography. If we are honest, we perhaps should forget the objects rendered in photography and painting, we should definitely forget the reputation of 'famous' purveyors of these arts (or crafts), and we should concentrate on what drives it all. Its the light.

Sanctum Sanctorum - Do You Need One?

The Latin word sanctum is the neuter form of the adjective "holy," and sanctorum its genitive plural. Thus the term sanctum sanctorum literally means "the holy [place/thing] of the holy [places/things]," replicating in Latin the Hebrew construction for the superlative, with the intended meaning "the most holy [place/thing]. The concept is as old as the Latin from which its name comes from. Its with us still today as it was throughout civilizations development, from withdrawing room to man-cave. Thoreau built a cabin. One Apollo astronaut 'rattled around in his mini-cathedral'. Book nooks and coffee shops shelter furtive lap-top enhanced figures. Not everyone needs their own persona sanctum sanctorum, but its pretty close to a universal drive inside us. My father went duck-hunting. Once as a boy I asked him if I could go with him .. his answer rings down through the years until at last I could understand it. It wasn't about the ducks. He said he needed time away from the family. There were worse ways he could have done it. The contents of this book, these 100 journal entries, explore my own unlikely journey to my own personal sanctum sanctorum. The end result is deceptive, and may not be anything anybody else ever achieves the same way. For its a unique embodiment of the ghosts, angels, and demons which drive me. Yours may vary. But the thought process' involved may be universal. So you may not end up with a personal Planetarium out back of your barn. You probably don't HAVE a barn, I never set out to have one either. But you probably have a backyard, a basement, a spare room, a large walkin closet. Anywhere will do, its just a matter of scale. A pair of headphones where you 'meet the Beatles' or any other musical phenomenon from history. Upon reflection, I've used all of those places too. So herein lies my personal thought process and actions to build a planetarium. Its alot more than that though too. Its my space. My place. I built it. But now I'm in the process of turning it over to everyone else, which is as it should be perhaps. Personal dreams . maybe they are meant to be not so personal after all. Maybe they belong to everyone.

So What Do You Need to Win

I titled my book 'How the Stars Were Won', because they were out there, and I knew I could bring them in to where I was, if only symbolically. Whats 'out there' for you? What do you need to win. How the west was won - the land was out there, to the pioneers. They had the wagons. The scouts. The trails. The drive and desire. The dream. So out they went, but really they were bringing their dream in to where they lived in a way. I needed to win the stars. What do you need to win? I wrote this book so that 'home planetarium' could standin for whatever you needed it to. So you could imagine if not write your own book .. How the XXXXX was/were won. Its worth thinking about. And then its worth doing.

Manage Your Dream - be the Bros...

I watch one of those 'home and garden' shows on cable, its the one about two brothers who help people choose their 'dream home' by picking a fixer upper and then rennovating. One brother is a real estate whiz, the other is the contractor and visionary who literally removes walls and completely turns lead into gold, like some modern day alchemist. But there's an important first step in this process! First, the couple looking for the dream is shown exactly what they want, they get visibly excited .. they cannot believe how easy this has all been. Then smiling, the brothers tell them that the couple with the 400K budget will need 1.5 million dollars to 'buy' their dream. Smiles turn upside down. They realize they will have to BUILD their dream, not buy it. Manage their dream. Is it not true with hobbies for most of us? It is for winning the stars. There are some who can go out and buy a 200K old commercial star projector. Nobody of course but an institution can buy a modern digital projection system - thats the 1.5 million dollar dream how ready to move in. Even the 200K old commercial fixer upper would require rennovations you'd need an expert 'brother' to do for you. But most of us ARE the bros .. we have to be both ... we have to buy what we can buy and build what we can build. So be the bros. Find a way to manage your dream. I did. I built a star projector, a theater, and I brought it in with MY skillset, MY budget. And doesnt that make sense, since it was MY dream?

How the Stars Were Won

I'm developing a book on this subject and this is the opening paragraph, or at least the first draft of How the Stars were Won! When I tell people 'I built a planetarium out behind my barn' and invite them out on some sunny day to see the stars, I get one of three reactions. By far the most common is a blank look - perhaps a vague recognition that anything ending in 'arium' can't be good. Sounds medical even, and not in a good way. Some people will pretend to know what I just said and, in their empathy and kindness, replay 'great, wow', and then quickly change the subject. Only about 2 in 100 though will stare a second, realize what I just said, and want to know more. More about HOW I made a planetarium, which assumes they know WHAT a planetarium is. And how hard it must have been. How that particular battle was fought. They want to come out and see this arcane feat of imagination and complexity. They want to see how the stars were won. Brought down from their heavenly firmanent and put within our reach, to wheel and dance for our pleasure and education. I want to share that story with you here. Possibly because you might build a planetarium for yourself. But at least so that if we meet, you'll be in that 1 or 2 percent that will say.. show me!

Whats Your Crazy Childhood Dream?

In wondering why I build planetariums, domes, theaters, I keep coming back to this - I had alot of crazy childhood dreams that never made it off the drawing board of the mind. Never leaped off the dusty shelves of long forgotten rooms and found me where I was today. Why planetariums? Growing older is perhaps an oxymoron, I noticed this in my father as he aged. The older he got, the earlier were his memories, and in greater detail. While he couldnt remember the past 20 years much at all (alarming!), he would out of nowhere tell me details of things from his childhood I'd never heard the man utter. So perhaps, as we grow older, we also grow younger. Maybe we NEED to clutch, like some symbolic teddy bear, something of those young halycon days and take it with us. The subject is fraught with cliche, mid-life crisis fueled sports cars and hair colorations. Yet if we do it right, that teddy bear - that crazy childhood dream .. can live with us forever and keep us impossibly tethered to that world we loved. That land we knew of childhood fantasy and dreams. Maybe thats why I build planetariums.

Why So Few?

Why do so few people 'make' planetariums? The easy answers are legion. You can buy them!. Toy planetariums, semi serious slide planetariums with films of thousands of stars. You can buy old commercial planetariums. You can adapt a video projector with software. Why would you want to build one in 2012? And the above is for people who wonder about the stars, who want to see them and learn them to begin with. With myriads of other options, you can buy constellation cufflinks on Etsy and everything in between. Nobody can really SEE the real stars anymore, so they are becoming non-entities in the real sky. Oddly they've merged with those other 'stars', movie stars, Star Wars Star Trek Star Search . star is one of the most overworked 4 letter words we have! But even when I started building planetariums in the 60s, very few people built them. Most of the above wasn't in play. Spitz sold the Junior but how many bought those? Richard Emmons was building them in Ohio, to be followed by Steve Smith. I was lucky to purchase works by both of these pioneers and meet them. But very few others. Building planetariums is hard. Its kindof like, I think I'll make my own bowling ball. I think I'll make my own soldering iron. When I came up people DID make things from scratch, or kits - you could build a crystal radio, grind a telescope mirror, buy heathkit tvs etc. Not so much anymore. The desire alone is practically nonexistent then, to be followed by ridiculous difficulty. Arcane requirements that are not obvious. Endless experimentation in the dark. Why WOULD anyone want to go through all that? There are many many reasons why very few people 'make' planetariums. Its got me wondering, why am I one of the few? It was early inspiration, being impressed by the Adler in the mid 60s, much as I'm sure kids in 77 were affected by Star Wars. It was a concurrent discovering of amateur astronomy, but on an incredibly modest level - a 2.4 department store scope under suburban Chicago skies. Expectation management was never difficult for me due to my roots! It was a happy environment growing up where we made everything. Skateboards, race cars, army guns, baseball fields, models, indian headresses ... we made so many things. But it still might now have happened if my mother hadnt liked cakes. Weekly brought home square white cake boxes from an old defunct discount chain called Topps. I had a flashlight bulb on a board with wires leading to a battery pack. I don't know WHY I had this. I had no earth globes. No celestial globes. I remember going to a friends house with my light and cakebox, and stars punctured in it with a safety pin. And was blown away. Maybe it was because I could see more on the ceiling than I could in those suburban skies. Maybe it was because I could only be taken to Adler twice a year, but now I had my own. Maybe it was just standard operating procedure for a kid of the 60s to make everything. But it planted seeds in my mind. Seeds that would blossom much later in life. Why dont people make planetariums? The answer must be in some of the above? They don't now, and they didnt then either. They never have. And probably never will. But I'm not like that for some reason. I'm glad.

Thuban and the Great Pyramid

About 2750 BC, Thuban in Draco was less than 10 degrees from the exact northern pole, although now more than 26 degrees, and as it lies nearly at the centre of the figure, the whole constellation then visibly swung arund it, as on a pivot, like the hands of a clock, but in the reverse direction.

The star could be seen, both by day and night, from the bottom of the central passage of the Great Pyramid (Knum Khufu) at Ghizeh, in 30 degrees north latitude, as also from the similar points in five other like structures; and the same fact is asserted by Sir John Herschel as to the two pyramids at Abousseir. Herschel considered that there is distinct evidence of Thuban formerly being brighter than now, as its title from its consellation and its lettering would indicate. With Bayer it was 2nd magnitude, in fact the only one of the brilliancy in his list of Draco, and generally so in star catalogues previous to two centuries ago.

The passage in the Great Pyramid is 4 feet by 3.5 feet in diameter and 380 feet long, directed northward to Thuban, at an altitude of 26 degrees. At the time of its building, the Southern Cross was entirely visible.

Source, Star Names and their Meanings, Page 206