The Magic Ball

Whoa!  What's This?  Looks like some kind of spaceship.  Well, in a way, sort of, but not really.  It is a "star projector," the heart of the Vanderbilt Planetarium where our club meets.  There are three different parts of creating the night sky in the planetarium after the lights go down.  This is the ball that creates all the stars on the inside of the dome.  And the stars are so perfect that you can bring binoculars and look at the man made sky with them, the stars are so well done!  At our meeting last night we had a talk by the planetarium director, about the history of planetariums and star projectors.  Such a fascinating story.

There are other parts that add to the ability to project the night sky onto the dome.  Here the lighting is designed to create the fading light after sunset, on a brilliant clear night.  Looks gorgeous, doesn't it?

And this is the stunning reproduction of the sky, from the star ball projector.  Because we all live under light polluted skies, to sit and see a jet black night with brilliant stars is an absolute joy.  Other parts of the projection system can take us out of our solar system to places thousands of light years away.  And another part of the system projects the sun and the moon and the planets.  It is an amazing system. 

Here, as part of the presentation last night are two people who came to the lecture, and they are looking at a paper star map handed out to everyone, and they are illuminating it with a red flashlight so as not to ruin everyone who has become "dark adapted" after sitting in the darkened planetarium for half an hour.  Using red flashlights and the star maps, people were encouraged to try and find some of the constellations.  It was an amazing evening with the history lesson and the stargazing together on the same night.  A real treat!