How I Taught Astro Physics - Part One

So for two days running, from 4 to 5 PM on a Monday and Tuesday, I taught astro-physics to two groups of Junior Rangers in an old barn.   Using somebody's old discarded Sears slide projector, showing selected slides a guy in Arizona sold me from the 70s.  Pointing at homemade exhibits that included a sun model made out of metal tractor wheel on an electric fan stand, a galaxy painted on a gas company wooden spool top, a walmart umbrella with an earth globe stuck on the handle, and some homemade pyramids.  I had just built my fourth planetarium theater out back, but I couldnt use it.  So this is what resulted.  And it was good.

There were philisophical questions.  A nature group like this being shown hydrogen fusion?  Don't they just want to know where the North Star is for night hikes?   They left it up to me - this was reputed to be a planetarium, but nobody knew what that really WAS, so it could be anything I decided it was to show them.  That kind of blank canvass can be daunting, requiring really some self examination.  OK, they want to see what YOU want them to see.   What you can offer.   There are two ways to look at that really.  The first is, with no expectations and no admission fee, well, they get what they pay for.  I could turn on a TV with an hour video tape of Carl Sagan and they probably wouldnt mind.  It was just a field trip.  I could stand before them and just talk from memory.  I could dream up a workshop - connect the dot star maps.  Anything.  Once I realized that, it both removed any pressure I might have felt from the situation, but made me realized I was being given the chance to convey MY passion.   What drove ME.    What made ME do the things I have done, remember the things I have remembered, dream the things I have dreamed. 

And its like that when you build a planetarium.   People coming to you are blank slates expectation wise.  These are people who've seen every possible special effect in the movies, on their computer screens - theres no passion there anymore.   The passion has to come from within the presenter.  With the material that drives the presenter.  

And so - here was my opportunity - I had more passions than just pointing out constellations.  I LOVE that .. its why I was here.  But this .. THIS .. was a chance to do a little more ....

TO BE CONTINUED

a Planetservatory?

Sometimes something so odd happens in our endeavors that we first dismiss it as absurd.   Its well known acts of creation, assembly and such go through stages.  Yet do we always always known when we are 'done'?  In construction of my 16 foot revamp I have found such a quandry.   Having built up a dome-like roof for the projection of stars, I left two small zenith open spaces for access purposes.  These would be last covered to keep out the weather.  However, as I sat in the partially completed structure on a starry predawn January morning, I could see REAL stars shining down upon my through the opening.  I saw a high flying plane go by.  I began to think .. here is the real universe peeping down into my created one.  Just a little.  And an absurd notion sprung up that ..  I could show projected stars, then if conditions permitted, a telescope could actually peak through those triangles .. like looking up the shafts in the Great Pyramid into heaven.  I could have a combination planetarium and observatory.  A planetservatory.   Logistical questions abounded of course - how much rain falls through a given size hole .. how could a 'hatch' be opened and closed 15 feet above my head ..  But what an absurd notion to think that maybe an unfinished roof really can be finished ....

Better Buy Twenty

Hobbies generally require the acquisition of 'stuff' ..   and then you 'do' them.   In golf, one acquires clubs and golfballs, shoes, gloves, wardrobe, then pays to play.  Bowling has much lower overhead, a ball and shoes perhaps.  Collections of any kind merely involve seeking out and acquiring new items, with possibly storage/display costs.   What about home planetariums.   There are some crazy things needed.

For those who restore old commercial planetariums - like old cars or old anything... the supply is scarce and dwindling.  Getting the units is hard enough - many are scrapped and disappear.  Fixing them, getting parts and manuals and expertise is even harder.   For those who MAKE home planetariums, its a strange mix of the commonplace and the exotic.  The problem seems to be - whats commonplace TODAY may not be tomorrow.

In making planetariums, if you find something that just 'works' and you need five of them - better buy twenty.  The textbook case is the lenses that were so plentiful, so cheap back in the 60s-90s via Edmund Scientific.   9mm by 265mm .. they now cost about 7 dollars EACH.   Building supplies are similar - a roll of vinyl flashing perfect for needling starfields was easily obtainable in my town 10 years ago, but has vanished.  Galvanized trailer skirting for dome building could be had easily - gone so expensive now I could never have bought the 40 pieces I could afford 10 years ago.    Light sources - bulbs, lanterns, flashlights - years of search have yielded only a few that produce really good results.   Do we buy 5?

Better buy twenty!

Enthralling Though Useless

Enthralling Though Useless

The book on all this I'm contemplating, like a home planetarium or any crazy endeavor in life, seeks to find the enthralling within the ultimately useless.   Nobody NEEDS a home planetarium.   But then nobody needs a swimming pool unless they need physical therapy they cant get anywhere but at home that involves swimming.  I always thought that the mark of great nonfiction was encapsulated in this idea - that the work or endeavor has utterly NO relevant or practical application in anyone’s life or problems.  Building a planetarium is on the same continuum as a model railroad maybe, or any hobby done because it cannot NOT be done.   Its an oxymoron or contradiction ultimately - we find a true passion in the useless.   But I found that it DID have meaning in my life in myriad ways, like the myriad stars I would project.  And like contemplating life around our star, the inevitable wondering was this …   would it resonate with anyone else out there?  On any of those other suns?

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.
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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.