Meri & The Lens

At our astronomy meeting tonight, we heard a lecture on the history of planetaria.  "Planetaria" is the plural of "planetarium" which is where we see shows of stars in the sky at night, in a dome.  The Vanderbilt Planetarium, where we meet, has a very modern sky projector.  Dave, the speaker, talked about the evolution of sky projectors, and had a few pieces of the older projector which had been installed in 1971.  This piece is called a "star plate"  and is one of many from the old projector.  This piece projects images of all the stars in a particular part of the sky.  We got to pick this device up, point it at a bright light, and see brilliant stars against a black sky.