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!
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!
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