Dome Purgatory

OK I've made changes. And changes. And CHANGES. But I've got ALOT of exercise. Run up several enormous Lowes balances. Bought enough black vinyl to cover Chicago. Hauled so many strange loads to the county landfill the guy who works there runs over and laughs at my trailerloads... WHAT have I been looking for? You know how something looks effortless? Just RIGHT. Like something you whipped up in 10 minutes. Like an iphone maybe - Wrigley Field... something thats the end result of countless moving around designs etc that finally just CLICKED. Thats what I've been trying to do. Maybe.

So after I had a little 10 foot dome in a lean to addition on the back of my huge old barn - well actually briefly there were several OTHER domes in that same barn .. thats another story .. I decided to build 'the big one' out back of the barn. I already had another leanto building and a building further out. So there was a space in the middle that would hold THE BIG ONE. So I built this round building with a flat metal roof. Inside went a curved cheap thin paneled dome, because thats what I had used for the 10 foot. The projector pointed west in real directions. Light got in the door though, so I built onto the front of this a 'light trap' tunnel. This lasted a year, I only had one visitor during this time, a guy from the local astronomy club, who was never heard from again. This theater bugged me though, the roof was too flat, it was too clausterphobic. So I blew out the southern wall and built an addition. This was cheaply done, using a canvas roof and fence sections as walls. Now I had half a dome (the better half of the paneling), which began a neverending debate about which was better in a small place, half or full. In a full small dome you have stars right over your shoulder etc. I started putting the dome all the way to the floor by adding large commercial white posters I got from my job. I had a couple shows in there.

It leaked bad. The paneling started warping. I added a little office with a computer, the first of several. This is where, famously, a large snake was seen crawling down a 2 by 4. I then began another neverending debate was to whether my theater should be pitch black or not. Pitch black theaters are great for day shows, but not so great to hang out in, as a hobby person tends to do tweaking things. So I made this second configuration pitch black a while. Thats when I found a snake under the carpet - same snake probably. No matter - my old theater featured a bat hanging from the summit occasionally. Country living. I had elaborate things in here - I hung windows with candles in them - I hung large speakers .. this was my theater! I even slept in it a couple times. I had a couch. I began loading music on the computer in the little office - I built a little roof over the computer so it would be safe. I shot some music videos in there. Looking back, it was my favorite interim theater. But it didnt last.

It leaked so bad, right where the additions met the original round building - and the flat roof bugged me. So I ripped the roof off and made it taller and more rounded - no easy task with flat roofing sheets. Except inexplicably I left a sagging section. For over a year I had no faith this roof would stay up by itself so I had a single support 2 by 4 'just in case'. I also had put a support beam up above the 'dome', which sagged quite a bit over the years. No matter. Now I had a taller roof dome, but the paneling was rotten so it got ripped out. I now changed the orientation from north looking (in real directions) to east looking, to take advantage of the tallest section of the roof in that direction, and the sloping down of the land in that direction. I bought dozens of foam craft board now and used them as the dome surface, stapled to some lattice I nailed up on the underside. I tore down the old office and the old light trap entrance. Large messes just kept coming - walls, roofs, tunnels, offices, domes .. all had now come and gone .. laboriously. But I strove on! I built a NEW office and entrance - the addition now had become an entrance way, with the office at the rear.

I gave a couple shows in this one, but it seemed tight so I added a little alcove at the rear. But it still leaked - the foam boards began warping. The alcove was too small. I never used the office, even after I opened up a window in it looking into the theater. But the foam paneling wasn't working, and there was that flat spot in the roof. I tried to hide this with a lantern at one point - it didn't work. That part of the roof had to go. Off it came, another mess. Out came the foam paneling - another mess. Now I found plastic insulation panels and put them on the walls and ceiling, hand spraying them white. And I went back to a full dome - I was tired of half domes. I moved in a church pew to join the couch. I vacillated between full chairs and short 'gare' chairs. Couldnt decide. The support beam disappeared and the new better shaped ceiling looked good. I put a new door over in the north side and converted the front part of the entrance addition to an office, putting in the music computer - briefly this had a wrought iron door looking into the theater. This is where things stood when I did the 'lighthearted tour' video. But I wasnt done.

The dome surface itself bugged me because of the indentations in the insulation panels .. plus I couldn't get it white enough . By this time it was fall 2014, and my 2 week fix the ceiling project was taking all year. I pulled the ceiling out creating another large mess and put up black plastic. My dome material you see had to be water AND light leak resistant, since I'd decided finally I needed a pitch black theater. Night only shows just weren't making it, I'd had 2 school bus loads come out the summer before and couldn't even get them IN the star theater because it was day (I gave other presentations in the barn instead). So I had a planetarium where I wasn't showing stars. So I connected the new door with the lean to behind the barn and built a tunnel between the two .. now people could sit in the large barn area and then walk into the theater. I got a paint sprayer and turned the black plastic now overhead white. The rest of the former addition, where a couch had sat, now was screened off and some LED dippers added to provide a focal point. A small lighted village (the second, I had one in the original round theater) was added, the pew was removed, the couch moved to the west wall, the orientation of the projector now pointed south in real directions - it has now pointed in all of the 4 directions. I'll have to do another full post on projector mounting. It changed just as much as the theater.

So now I have a pitch dark theater, a focal point screen area, a couch for parents and short chairs for kids, an entrance tunnel - an office round back with music .. a back room behind the panels .. I still have the large barn area (the Sumner Star theater, the subject of yet ANOTHER post, since its gone through dozens of changes). .the barn area is now however more of a 'making planetarium' workshop. More on that.

So I think I'm stopping now. Its new, it incorporates most of what I've been striving for. Is it perfect? No. It doesn't leak anymore, I put reams of black vinyl overhead. I like it.

I think I'll keep it. Maybe.

The Sumner Star Theater

About the first one discovers when they bring a group out to the home planetarium is this - what if all the people dont FIT in your little star theater?  So as I contemplated this dilemma (which led to endless debates on how to fit them in, on the floor, on short little chairs, on couches, benches, a church pew (yes I have one, dont ask), tall chairs ..  eventually I realized I needed a 'holding area' so I could potentially split up big groups into pieces.   Since the planetarium was immediately behind a large old barn filled with couches and easy chairs from 30 years of remodeling the main house, it wasn't long before a plan emerged!   The Sumner Star Theater was born.  Because - if you have people sitting in a place, what ELSE can you do besides have them wait to go into the star theater.

It turned out, I could have them do alot.  So much in fact, the tail began wagging the dog, and I spent several years indulging in fantasies, I mean long held dreams, about other things RELATED to the stars at the expense of star shows.  But it was all good.  A bit unfocused, but some hobbies are tightly focused and some aren't. Home planetariums can be incredibly diverse.  So here I brought in every related interest that had occurred. to me. Why not.  There was nothing to stop me.  I had a large area, a captive audience ..

Stars and history.   That I think was the main attraction.  The stars as the only thing we can see today that is exactly (well almost) as the ancients saw them.   So what is the FIRST thing, well the second thing after Stonehenge, I had that covered in my music The Salisbury Trilogy, one thinks of with the ancients and the stars.  Why the pyramids of course. So I built some.

Updated July 2015:    The Sumner Star theater as a concept has survived and moved over to a side venue - this has preserved some of that historical flavor thats been so fun.  Currently its set up with the Egyptian theme, which coincided with the production of my last 'obscure rock opera', Under Ancient Eygptian Skies (see Obscure Rock Operas blog).  The results of this mayhem may be seen here   Under Ancient Egyptian Skies.   Yes, there was a Khufu Dance.  Don't ask.  These were the last original songs I've written, in the first 15 foot dome theater in one creative outburst.  It is anticipated that this could be part of my live shows, keeping that Jake Jones spirit alive (Jake Jones being the band I remember playing in the Abrahms planetarium in the mid 70s)

So the Sumner Star theater has been and will continue to be a secondary outlet for historical and musical star related creativity!  What could be better.

A Tale of Three Umbrellas

This came about because I'm trying to use some umbrellas in the barn as portable domes for building small planetariums, I've got three up at present and I imagined what I'll say to childrens groups when using them to demonstrate various homemade devices - it came out something like this!
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Once there were three umbrella brothers  - all young, and going out into the world to seek their fortunes.

But what did life mean for an umbrella?  The very name itself was funny - um sounded tentative .. ummm  - umbra meant shadow, or darkness.  Not very promising to a young umbrella. Elle - french, meant small.   Small shadow was the meaning of 'umbrella', and the brothers weren't sure they liked it.  But the smallest of the three decided that's what an umbrella was for, to be a small shadow, and he said 'I'll spend my life sheltering folks from the rain'.  Surely THAT'S what an umbrella's destiny must be.   Nobody could disagree - most umbrellas only came out on rainy days.   But the next biggest brother wasn't so sure.  Being somewhat of a linguist (umbrellas went to school), he knew that another name for umbrella was 'parasol'.  THAT'S what I'll do in my life he boasted - no rain for ME - 'para' means shielding against', and 'sol' means sun - I'll only come out on SUNNY days, and keep folks cool in hot weather!   And everyone thought that was a worthy goal - the only thing better than coming out on rainy days was to be useful on sunny ones!   But then the two brothers looked up at the biggest and asked him... well, what about you?

The biggest brother patted his two smaller siblings on the back (umbrellas have backs), and encouraged them in their worthy if somewhat traditional umbrella pursuits.  'I think I'll do something a little different', he said thoughtfully.   I want to be something more than a small shadow in my life.  I want to hold up something for others, all others, to share - to gaze in wonder at.  I want to hold up the stars!   His two smaller companions laughed at first, but then gasped when he slowly and majestically spread his arms and rose into the sky.  The sun went down and the rain stopped and slowly, one by one, the stars came out and reflected their glory on his shining outspread white face.   Like his brothers, the biggest umbrella had found his destiny - he would be a reflector of the glory and wonder shining above in the stars!

And so, throughout their long and useful lives, the three umbrella brothers were happy in their callings.  I hope everyone listening to this tale of three umbrellas can do the same!   

I Look Up So Much, I Forgot to Look UP

As one who planetariums (its a verb) all the time in my backyard universe, strange things happen like this morning.  Ive taken to rising about 4 AM to get out there when the air is fresh and cool even in August, no light leaks plague my dome, and the coffee courses through my veins.  Ive talked about it before, the fact that if you CAN experiment, you WILL in a home planetarium.  So I do it constantly - but theres a dark side - no pun intended - I tend to look at the same couple constellations as I shift skies, projectors, light sources, light source POSITIONS (a whole topic).   So this morning I found a wonderful position for my old Spitz A3 starball, donated by Harold Clutter.  Summer Milky Way arching beautifully - teapot and top of the scorpion dancing along the horizon in the south .   but then there was this whole patch of sky to my chagrin I couldnt identify.   Yes, lost in my own sky again.   It should be easy I thought, just north of the M of Cassiopea (the regal queen is on her head, to quote a song of mine) ... but WHAT are those stars, I couldnt recognize them.   Heres the funny thing though.  As I walked through the predawn darkness back to the house, I decided I needed to grab a starmap and check out that region ..   then I stopped dead in my tracks.

And looked UP.  The real stars glimmered above, the same stars I had just left in my universe.  Only these were much bigger - in that much bigger universe.   I had literally forgotten to look up at the real stars above my head.  I was so immersed in my private universe, I thought I needed a map.   I quickly was reminded I was looking above the M at Andromeda and Pegasus - I rushed back into my little theater and sure enough, NOW I saw them tilting there.   I didnt need a map.   I realized, I look up so much, I forget to look .. UP.  

A Brief Overview of the Home Planetarium Association

What does a flashlight bulb and 2 D batteries under a pin-pricked cake box have to do with a Zeiss Skymaster?  Worlds apart technology-wise, they both create something.  Something wonderful! Oddly, both these ‘technologies’ are now equally obsolete, but not everywhere.  At the Home Planetarium Association they proudly live on, side by side!   We just like stars.  And we like looking up in nature’s sky, but we can also create our own.  And we do.    We say,  yes,  you need one at your house.   

Begun in the early 90’s, HPA is an extremely loose confederation of old schoolers.  We never left the Adler in 1965 to put it in a nutshell - or any of the old star palaces, with their hushed back-lit galaxies and their charming horizon silhouettes.  We still read ‘Startlit Nights’ by Peltier, and if Orion was projected on our chest during some otherwise forgotten planetarium show of our youth, it was part of the fun.    But it’s a loose group because everyone brings their own passions to the table, and they vary widely.  Some build bigger cake boxes using pinhole projection, some restore old Minoltas and can tell you the differences between the Spitz A1 and the A2.  Some collect the fantastical space toys of long ago.  We’ve noticed everyone has their own ratio of interest - a sortof combined  Educator/Showman/Builder/Dreamer index.  For example, I’m about 20 percent educator, 20 percent showman, 20 percent builder, and 40 percent dreamer.  I chase those passions, memories, and in my recreated sky I relive everything I ever loved about the sky and write about it.  What’s your HPA ratio?

The pioneers who got me started were Steve Smith of Arizona and Dick Emmons of Ohio - both were building and showing stars in the 40’s and 50’s.  Enthralled with their exploits, I have drilled several star globes and cylinders used in my shows at Sumner Skies Planetarium, under a homebuilt 15 foot dome out back.  My primary projector is Steve Smith’s amazing 20 inch copper cylinder, which is not only an incredible projector, it’s a piece of folk art.  I was privileged to obtain one of Mr Emmon’s last hand drilled metal globes, and have since donated it to the Planetarium Museum in Big Bear Lake California - oh yes, theres a planetarium museum - an incredible collection I was thrilled to contribute to, a homebuilt ’cakebox’ sitting next to legendary commercial monsters of the midway.  

How many home planetarians are there?  Just a handful of home built planetariums in operation today are known to HPA, using old school projection.  The video revolution has charged ahead while we sit and wonder why our Aldeberan isn’t quite as bright as it should be!  Pinhole projection is easy - tiny bright light sources can be found at your local dollar store.  Domes are hard, and we call the period of struggle to build one ’dome purgatory’ only half in jest, but they can be built our of anything - umbrellas, parachutes, thin paneling, sheets, or as in my case waterproof insulation panels (waterproof because my dome leaks, which fits in nicely discussing the rainy season)  But HPA has a saying - For what is a dome really but an impossibly graceful construct of curved nothingness - it must be strong enough to hold up the bowl of night, yet it supports only the unfathomably tiny pressure of the myriad star points.   A dome’s job is to disappear anyway!  Nice work if you can get it. 

So HPA tries to do a little of all this and more - the subjects are endless.  Music.  Shows.  Special Effects.  We call anything that can be used in our skies ‘good junk’  HPA has an occasional newsletter that is in its 22nd issue, yet thinks nothing of taking a year or two off to pursue that Renwals Cosmorama I last saw at EJ Korvettes in 1962.  HPA’ers understand.  The stars are patient and so are we. Recreating infinity takes as long as it takes.   In summary, the Home Planetarium Association welcomes any aspect of old school planetariums, whether you build them, collect them, or just fondly remember them.   Its organic and really rests on just one central tenet - yes, you need one at your house!  

Lights in the Sky

Being a summarizer by nature, I find it hard to capture the essence of planetariums.   Lights in the sky is my latest attempt to bring a thousand points of thought and machinery and emotion and memory and science into four words.  And for all the phrases me and my esteemed friends with this passion have uttered over the years (and they have been eloquent and many), lights in the sky is my current favorite.  It all comes back to lights in the sky.

And why not - whether we swear by God or the Sun, physics or emotion, evolution or creation, its the lights in the sky that somehow begat us - that lead us - that move us.  We take lights in the sky for granted.  We study them, learn about them.  But how often do we celebrate them?  Certain holidays are on days of forgotten purpose, but our daylight saving lives are more and more contrived and less and less natural.  Who even would count how many lights there are these days in THEIR skies.

The sun surely.  The moon?  Ignored mostly.  Lightning yes.  Fireflies?  That profound random of fireflies are less enjoyed than manufactured glows of screens these days.  Rainbows, who rushes out to see them? Meteors, who is quick and determined enough to see them during their brief existence.  The aurora - what percentage of the people have seen the aurora.  There are more exotic, faint lights - you know what they are.  There are manufactured lights - far too many yet they are in the sky and we must acknowledge them too.

They are up there whether we see them or not.  Seeing them is the first step to perhaps a richer life experience, for after seeing them comes maybe, if we are lucky, feeling them.

I like learning about lights in the sky.   But I find it even better to let them seep into my being, becoming guideposts and lamps at the core of everything I have loved and will love here in this life. 

Education or Illusion?

WHY build a home planetarium is a question nobody but people who DO ask ..why for example have a spent as many hours doing this instead of bowling.  I've been the subject of three newspaper articles, and was never asked WHY.  People just do what they do.  So I ask myself though, being of a somewhat amateurish philosophical bent.   There are easy answers.  I want to teach astronomy, and inspire future generations is a slam dunk.   But if that were really my one driving passion, wouldn't I have become a teacher?  I didn't.  I like to build complicated things is a slam dunk - nothing compares with the wide range of things to build in this arcane pursuit - from the intricacies of a star projector to the structural nightmare of a dome, from the accuracy of realistic stars to the unfathomable logistics of a round backyard theater.  But if that were my driving passion, I'd build other things and be somewhat good at them.  I don't, and I'm not.  So WHY?   Theres something about the illusion a planetarium creates.  Something that resonates deeply back far far into my past I think is WHY.  I havent yet figured it out and may never do so - but somehow sitting in my own planetarium brings back long ago summer nights - trips to places - it just reminds me of so much that I loved growing up (he ended lamely) .    And I think that sharing this - sure I want to feel some pride in building something convincing - I want to teach some things and inspire some people for the future. But mostly probably its that old - I wish you could feel what I feel when I see this.  A desire to share that illusion, that wistful elusive feeling.  Thats probably the main reason WHY I built a planetarium. 

Floored!

Consider the poor floor.  I always liked floors you could look at for entertainment - the carpet in my place of employment looks as if late Pleistocene dinosaurs used it for birthing (you dumped your coke here in what, 1974? oh 75) .  sorry if you cant unsee that .   but hardwood floors .. sublime!  Tile, elegant.  Plank, soft popular painted as in my old victorian farmhouse, rutted with the feet of history.  Creaking just slightly as good floors will sometimes.  I enjoy floors.  But the home planetarium floor - its an organic entity in itself.

I use carpet refugees from the house of course, and an amateur archeologist could discover layers from eras .. theres my sons carpet from grade school - down another layer or two, theres the lime green carpet in the dining room the day we first owned the house in 1985 and without a word, carried it out immediately.  But my planetarium floor is more than just rug-ology - its a living breathing space.   If it could talk !   It would complain about those drips ...   since my planetarium has had several roofs, they've shifted around but they've always been there.  My floor would request buckets to catch them like in that summer of 94 ..  It would recall the snake that got under said carpets and was later seen slithering down a wall joist..  My planetarium floor would stick out its tongue at my carpentry and its gaps - somehow leaves get in, and they are NOT all tracked in .. they blow in  .. from somewhere .  I believe leaves are shape shifters .. they teleport themselves into everything I own.   Look, there's TREES we said as we bought this country place.  I've been picking up sticks and raking leaves ever since.  The planetarium floor would complain on and on .... MAKE UP YOUR MIND which chairs you are using ....   wait, whats this church PEW...  this couch, wasn't that in the sunroom throughout the aughts??  Stop rearranging.   Stop dragging stepladders over me!   Stop changing dome materials, dropping paint, staples.   Did you know you dropped a lense over here 3 years ago?  You might want to put it back in the bag.  If you only knew. Which of course, you don't.  And on and on my planetarium floor would complain.

But that's not the whole story. It would beam in delight too.  It would lovingly recall the footsteps of children, excited children, cautiously entering and then sitting on it.  It would hear the gasps as the stars came out. It would watch my stars on the ceiling and wonder how many floors get to see stars anyway, floorhood being primarily an indoor profession.   And it, I hope, would commune with the very ground it rested upon - recalling the years before the planetarium when I mowed its lush grass .. and the decades before that, when cows grazed upon it .. and back and back it would go sharing stories with the ground that supported it.  Back into forests and times that can live only in our imaginations.

Imagination.  That's what really my planetarium floor supports.  Thats where my stars came from.  We're both literally 'grounded' in both reality and imagination.   The next time I walk across that floor I'll try to remember all this.   As I shift a bucket, looking for that next leak.