Austin Planetarium

A Fresh Face

2010-10-21T13:51:00.004-05:00

Things have really picked up here since the introduction of our mobile planetarium. Lucia has been extremely busy traveling to schools and other events around the area three to four times a week. Considering the pace at which things are moving forward, we found ourselves a bit shorthanded. Luckily, Torvald has found an ambitious young man to help around the office:

Greetings! Let me start off with an introduction: my name is Jordan Silverthorne, and I'm a recent UT business school grad with a degree in marketing. Torvald and I bumped into each other last week at a meeting of the Metropolitan Breakfast Club, and the moment he mentioned "planetarium," I was on board. I may be straight out of college, but my recent work experience has included both writing gigs and non-profit marketing activities. Additionally, my time at UT has required that I dabble in graphic design, management consulting, and interactive media creation. Needless to say, UT ensures that us marketing folk are well prepared for a dynamic and fast-paced work environment, which is exactly where I now find myself!

I grew up in west Texas, just north of the city of Lubbock. Up there, low humidity and pollution levels allow for a very clear view of the sky at night. I grew up gazing at the stars, and I even decorated my bedroom with glow-in-the-dark star wallpaper and ceiling stickers. Every lunar eclipse, I could be found dragging my telescope out of the bedroom and into the front driveway. Likewise, when Halloween rolled around, I donned my NASA flight suit and ran amok around the neighborhood. To say that I'm a good fit for this organization might be a bit of an understatement.

I suppose one could say that I'm a tad on the "nerdy" side. I grew up watching Star Trek: TNG and the original Star Wars trilogy. Of course, real space exploration is nothing like it is depicted in science fiction, but that doesn't mean that there aren't fascinating-- and even dangerous-- forces in the universe, and I want you to be able to learn about them in the same way as our neighbors in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and every other city with a planetarium. As our plans here move forward, Tyler and I will be working alongside Torvald, Lucia, and our many volunteers and advisors to bring a world-class planetarium and science museum to downtown Austin!

1159!

2010-10-13T13:40:00.005-05:00

Don't you hate it when you buy something, and it doesn't exactly work as advertised? Like, buying a car which "seats 6" but is completely full with just four?

Well... thankfully sometimes things can be different too. We purchased an incredible inflatable planetarium from our friends in Houston called "e-planetarium", and it was advertised as being capable of seating about 30 adults or 45 kids. But of course, that is the advertised capacity. So, we have been testing this, and up to Saturday, the results were promising. We had at one point 27 adults in the dome, and it still felt very roomy, but what I had NOT expected was what happened this Saturday.

In a nutshell: we were at Scoutjam and 30,000 people showed up. WOW!

The first show we put 22 people in the dome, and from then on there was a continuous line, so the second show we put in 35, then 37, 40! And this was mixed adults and kids, so 40 was a really good number. We had shows every 10 minutes, but still the lines continued... As we got more experienced in seating folks, we cranked it up to 45, 50, 56... and then the last show (10 minutes after closing) so we really made an attempt to seat everyone, we managed to seat 61!!

The total count of the day was a stunning 1159 people through the planetarium, about 2/3 were kids and 1/3 adults. 1159 in one day!

Below we have pasted a video of the line in front of the dome. Apologies for the poor quality, but the lighting was very unfortunate, and it was also very dusty. Our next public event should be a hit too! We'll be at the Science and Engineering festival at the convention center. You can read more about that free event here.

Working hard is paying off

2010-08-19T15:31:00.003-05:00

Several pieces of good news! The first reservations for our new Mobile Planetarium are in, and there is quite some excitement about this program. We received requests from Austin, Leander, Bastrop, Waco, Dallas and even Mexico!

This did make us wonder though how people were able to find us so quickly? Sure, we have been on KLRU, writing about the program in our newsletter, but still... Waco? Dallas? Mexico??

So, on a hunch, I decided to Google the phrase "Mobile Planetarium" and to my shock found that we are already listed as the fifth item in the search result! Note that I did not enter "Austin" in the search term (then we're number one), but simply "Mobile Planetarium". Quite impressive indeed!

Mobile Planetariums

2010-08-12T13:26:00.022-05:00

The Austin Planetarium has a new mobile planetarium, the Austin Planetarium Discovery Dome, and we can bring it directly to your school or event venue anywhere in Austin and the surrounding communities.

You may say, “why all the excitement?” Perhaps you remember that we had another mobile planetarium, the Star Bubble, which traveled to various school science fairs and community events. Why get a new one? What are the advantages of the new system?

The advantages are threefold. First, we now have a full-time astronomy educator who will travel with the mobile planetarium to your school or event. This means we can use it during school hours and are not limited to evening and weekend events. Second, this is a better and larger inflatable dome which means we have ventilation! All of you who visited our star bubble will remember how hot it would get inside, so this is a definite upgrade! Lastly, with the Star Bubble we never had our own projector, but instead used the projector of a donor who kindly loaned it to us. With our new Discovery Dome we now have our very own fully digital projection system!

Let’s talk about the different types of mobile planetariums. There are 3 popular types of mobile planetariums.

First, there’s the Star Bubble. Our original mobile planetarium was of the Star Bubble variety. We have had it for many years, but it turned out to be very difficult to use. The big problem was the setup; it was completely impossible for just one person to assemble. We always needed 3 or 4 strong individuals to bend the PVC pipes into shape. It seems to have been designed to be set up once, then easily moved to a different nearby location, but not to be set up and torn down at each location, as we did. The second problem was that the fabric, which comprised the dome, had gaps and therefore it was not 100% dark inside; of course, this is a problem if you’re trying to project something on the dome. Lastly, as mentioned before, it got HOT!!! Eventually we rigged some sort of AC contraption to force some cool air inside, but it was far from ideal. The projection system consisted of a laptop computer and a borrowed projector with a fisheye lens. It was set up in the middle of the dome and the audience sat around the edge. Visually, it was a very good system, but not as bright as we would have liked. One advantage of the Star Bubble is that it could be set up outside, if desired.

Second, there’s the StarLab. Some schools and organizations in the Austin area have a StarLab mobile planetarium. This was arguably the first commercially available mobile planetarium, and has been very popular for years. StarLabs use an inflatable dome with a standard diameter of 16 ft (4.9 m), although it is also available in a larger size. To enter, you crawl in through a tunnel to prevent the air from escaping from the dome. Once inside, people sit around the edge of the dome with the projection system in the middle. The projection system consists of a series of cylinders imprinted with images; when activated the light from within the cylinder projects the images upward onto the dome. The system will rotate and tilt to simulate different dates or times and different viewing locations. However, to change the display from a star field to constellations connected by lines or overlaid with constellation art, you must turn off the projector and change the cylinder…in the dark. Furthermore, the motion of the planets and phases of the moon cannot easily be simulated with this system.

The third type of mobile planetarium is the Discovery Dome. The Austin Planetarium’s new Discovery Dome has several advantages over the other two mobile planetarium types. It is an inflatable dome that is much easier and quicker to set up than the Star Bubble; we unroll it, plug in the fan, and within 5 minutes we have a planetarium! With a diameter of 18 ft (6 meters), it is larger and can fit more people than either of the other types of domes currently available in the area (yes, we have the largest inflatable planetarium in the Austin area!). It has a full-height “airlock” entry to allow adults to walk into the dome upright while keeping air loss to a minimum.

The Austin Planetarium Discovery Dome also utilizes a state-of-the-art digital projection system. This system is set up on one side of the dome so that people are seated in rows all looking in the same direction. This unidirectional design ensures more of the viewers can see the focal point or “sweet spot” of the projection. The system consists of a laptop computer, a standard projector, a flat mirror, and a curved mirror to “warp” the images to properly display them on the curved inside surface of the dome. This projection system has a higher resolution than the one we used in the Star Bubble. Interactive night sky software allows us to show not only star fields, including constellation lines and artwork as desired, but also planets and moon phases in their correct positions for any selected date and time. We can zoom in on planets, nebulas, and galaxies to see a telescopic view of these objects. In addition, we can show incredible full-dome immersive videos specially made for planetariums. Programs can cover any topic, not just astronomy; so students can learn about biology, history, earth science, and space travel for example. We can also display fantastic entertainment and music videos for private parties and corporate groups.

So I hope you are as excited as we are about the new Austin Planetarium Discovery Dome mobile digital planetarium. We would like to involve as many of the schools and general public as possible in our programs. After all, no one should have to grow up without finding out for themselves the immersive wonders of a modern digital planetarium.

For more information you can visit our newly added mobile planetarium pages, where we have program and pricing information and reservation forms.

A Compliment

2010-03-07T09:26:00.005-06:00

About six months ago I contacted Neil deGrasse Tyson to see if he was willing to serve as an adviser to our board. Obviously, to have someone with the clout of Dr. Tyson, would give our organization more weight, and I would love to have his input during the time we are developing the facility. Of course I realized that the chance he would say 'yes' was small, but hey, if you don't ask it surely will never happen.

Unfortunately, Dr. Tyson declined as he was actually in the process of shutting off existing advisory positions because they simply take too much of his time. But he was courteous, friendly and wished us luck on our efforts.

Then out of the blue, on February 26th I received an email from Dr. Tyson where he asked me for an update on the Austin Planetarium project. So, I wrote what all had taken place and what breakthroughs we have made. I showed him some building designs and updated him on the status of the location for the planetarium.

This morning I received his reply:

Keep up the good work. But especially happy to learn how unnecessary I turned out to be.

Thank you Dr. Tyson; that is a great compliment of our achievements and I cannot ask for a better worded letter of support.

Happy New Year… 7518?

2010-01-04T10:23:00.004-06:00

When the ball dropped in Times Square this year, you didn’t see 3…2…1 Happy New Year 5770 or 4343. You saw what much of the world expected to see; Happy New Year 2010. However, not everyone agrees on that number as calendars are human creations that often reflect events that are relevant to a specific group, rather than adhering to any universally accepted scientific phenomenon or some other objective criteria. So what year is it really?

Well, that depends on where you’re from and who you ask. First, we must examine some of the concepts of time that are held by different cultures. Not everyone perceives the passage of time as a one-way march with a distinct beginning and end. Some cultures view time as cyclical and repetitive; allowing long periods of time to come to a close and make way for new beginnings instead of ticking away in a linear fashion, growing ever larger as time goes by.

For instance, the Chinese calendar, from which the calendars of many Asian countries are derived, is based on a variety of criteria including lunar phases, solar declination, and astrological/zodiacal events. Furthermore, the Chinese calendar has not traditionally included an ongoing ordinal count beginning with a specific day in history; rather it employs a sexagenary stem-branch system that produces 60 different years in a cycle before starting anew, thus creating a cyclical system which provides us with designations like Year of the Earth Ox (2009) or Year of the Metal Tiger (2010). For the most part, modern China has adopted the Gregorian calendar that is widely used in the Western World, but in the past, the numerical value of a year was based on its position within an era, which was commonly a dynastic period. So you might end up with something like the tenth year of insert emperor/dynasty name here, in addition to the elemental and zodiacal stem-branch nomenclature.

It is this same cyclical perspective that is pervasive in the Mesoamerican calendar, and its ever-so-popular progeny the Mayan calendar, which is whipping the world into a frenzy in preparation for the coming of 2012. The Mayan calendar, like its Chinese counterpart, employs multiple layers of data which culminate in a complex matrix of information about both cultural historical events as well as astronomical events. Additionally, the calendar is intended to “run its course” and begin again in a new age. So fear not, the “end” of the Mayan calendar only signifies the end of this era, after which, a new era will begin.

The calendar most of the western world uses is the Gregorian calendar. Introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, the Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar with the division of months coinciding loosely with the phases of the Moon, but the dates for New Year coinciding with the solar year. For the purpose of communication, especially in business transactions, much of the world has adopted the use of the Gregorian calendar; although many places, like China, still utilize their traditional calendars as well, to track special events unique to their society.

Examinations of the methodology for recording the passage of time brings to mind, what has essentially become an adage… time is relative. The units of measurement used to express time are, ultimately, man-made devices; even if they are based on empirically quantifiable and observable phenomenon. So when you go to wish your friends a happy new year, be prepared to concede that it may not actually be 2010. Happy New Year everyone.

Nibiru

2009-11-17T16:04:00.003-06:00

OK, so I waited more then a day for the second post... my apologies, but I had a good reason: out of the blue I received a phone call to have breakfast with a four time NASA astronaut. Needless to say, that changed my schedule 'a bit'. But OK, now part two... Nibiru

Have you ever heard that name? Nibiru is the mythical planet, that is supposedly on a collision course with Earth. Need a planet? Let's invent one!

In 1995, Zecharia Sitchin claimed to have re-translated Sumerian texts proving the existence of this planet, that for some strange reason everyone else just happened to have missed. And this planet (which of course has never been actually seen by anyone) is on a collision course with Earth. Another name for this planet is planet-X.

To show the amount of nonsense is involved here, is that we were all supposed to die due to this collision back in May of 2003, when they initially predicted the collision. But, oops, nothing happened, so they "moved it up a bit" to 2010, and now magically the date has been changed again, so now it will be in 2012. On December 21 of course.

So, we have to believe that this one guy and his followers are so enlightened that they understand something that no one else does, but then so stupid to miss the date-of-doom by 9 years, but then only to come around and now we have to accept the incredible precision of a December 21 prediction. And mind you, no one has actually seen this planet, and planets are big things. If we were to believe we are going to collide with a planet (or in some claims a red dwarf) in only 3 years, this means that the object should be pretty much in our solar system by now. But somehow we all, including the believers, are looking in the wrong direction??

Yeah sure.

Next post: Good Ol' Nostradamus

No, No and No

2009-11-11T13:22:00.003-06:00

I have already been asked by several people for more information about the end-of-the-world in 2012, and the vehemency and accusatory tone of the questions are quite frankly rather shocking. How dare I not agree with their point of view?

On top of that, there is an enormous amount of misinformation that is actively being spread over the internet and other media, and folks that have less of a science and astronomy background might honestly be fearful. Either way, it is our task as a place of public education, to sort out the myths from the facts. The whole story is too long for one blog post, so let's start with the claims and over the coming days I will add posts that debunks each.

So... what is all the hullabaloo about? Well... it all starts with a calendar. As you know we have a calendar lasting 365 days, and this is based on how long it takes the Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun. However, other cultures have (or had) different calendars. In this case it comes to the calendar of the Mayan Culture.

This calendar is a true piece of mathematical art. It is based on a whole set of calendars, which are intertwined, creating a horrifically complex system lasting many thousands of years. You can read more at the wikipedia page about the calendar, and I think you will agree that this calendar is not something simple to understand.

As a matter of fact, the calendar is so complex that even today it is still in dispute of exactly when it started, and when it will "end". Anyway, the word "end" is exactly the hinge where all the problems come from. Does our calendar "end"? Well... in one way you can state that yes, it ends at December 31, and then rolls over to January 1st. But for some reason, in this case, probably because we're talking about Mayans, "end" has taken on a life by itself.

But let's keep to the facts... as far as we can tell the Mayan calendar does indeed roll over on December 21, 2012. Some scientists however, dispute the exact date and place it 200 years later, for this post, let's assume December 21 is the date.

So.. are there indications from the Mayans that they linked their calendar to a date-of-doom? No they didn't. Did the Mayans interpret the end date as "The End"? Nope, they saw it as the beginning of a new era, probably coinciding with a lot of Mayans starting new diets (OK I made that last bit up).

So, although there is nothing that leads us to believe December 21, 2012 is the date of doom, this has not stopped certain individuals to start piling things on top, resulting in a hodge-podge of claims and simply nonsense.

Tomorrow more...

Wow, right?

2009-10-14T07:01:00.005-05:00

I hope the word "WOW" came to mind when you started to read this post. Looking nice eh?

Yes, after many months of work we finally were at a point to go live with our new website. The design, as created by NAKA media, was done for some time ago, but that was simply the start of a long process, because we wanted a whole bunch of new pages as well. Plus, we wanted to introduce a content management system for the site, so that staff without programming skills, would be able to make updates to the site. We specifically want to thank Anthony Plattsmier from Open Gadget for his enormous help on this front, because he donated many dozens of hours installing, debugging and other complex coding time to this website.

So, now you have an opportunity to read in much more detail what the Austin Planetarium is about, how you can help, and how this project is progressing. But wait, there is more, because as a matter of fact we're not done yet!

One thing we are still working on is our online store. Yesterday, just before going live, we discovered some bugs preventing a customer from actually paying for an item, so there is still some more work to do there, but hopefully within a week we should be done with that as well. Then there are some additional pages we would like to add, and then we want to start rewriting the AstroNews page.

But for now, we're a BIG step forward, and I hope that you are impressed with our efforts so far. Please let us know what you think!

We can do more things in a planetarium than "Showing Stars"

2009-09-28T07:41:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I met Tammy Jarocki, who blogs about Art and Science here in Austin and I mentioned that it is my full intention to combine Art and Science in the Austin Planetarium. Most of the time I get blank stares because this is something new. So, I promised I would email her and my plan was to point her to a blog post on the subject... only to discover that I never blogged about it!

Actually, we did write about it, but only in our AstroNews pages some time ago. So... let's fix that right now. Be sure to watch (listen!!!) the amazing video at the bottom of this blog. And yes, it is completely safe to do this right at work.

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Of course a planetarium is to show the night sky in its most perfect condition. But did you know that these days we can do MUCH more in a planetarium dome? Of course, it is very difficult to prove this to you because we do not have a planetarium, but we will do our best!

The first major revolution that changed the planetarium world was the advent of "full dome video". In the old days we used to have a star projector to project the stars, and then we added slide projectors to add images. At the planetarium in Amsterdam, where I worked for several years, we actually had dozens and dozens of slide projectors all working together, creating an image that covered the entire dome. That was very pretty, but does not even come close to what we can do these days!

Of course you have seen LCD projectors. They are used for presentations in class or any other venue where we need moving video on a large screen. Now imagine taking several much stronger LCD projectors, and somehow "stitch" the separate images together covering the entire dome. That is exactly what we do with full-dome video. The result is a "TV screen" that wraps above and around you. Using video, we can show anything! Not just astronomy - but Biology, Chemistry, or even Architecture!

But, actually, having full dome video really opens up an entirely new experience. For example, when I visited the planetarium in Kiel, Germany I was treated to an amazing music show, created by Jens Fisher. And you bet I did make sure to invite him over to play his show when the Austin Planetarium has been built (and he accepted). The other wonderful thing is I can show you the show right here. The video was shot using a camera in that planetarium (you can see the curvature of the screen), and Jens is sitting at the center creating the music. He is doing this all by himself, live, no recordings, no other musicians, just him. Enjoy!

Terra Firma

2009-09-16T11:00:00.003-05:00

The Associated Press reported today that European astronomers have discovered, for the first time ever, a planet outside of our solar system that is not just “full of hot air.” Don’t get me wrong, it’s hot alright, with a surface temperature of 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s not exactly suitable for life as we know it; but it is solid. More than 300 planets have been discovered outside of our solar system, all of them gaseous balls; but this is the first time one has ever been proven to be as rock-solid as good ol’ Mother Earth. The planet, which was actually discovered earlier this year, has been dubbed Corot-7b and it closely circles a star only a stone’s throw away at a distance of approximately 500 light-years.

The discovery of Corot-7b’s firm physicality has brought great excitement to the scientific community, because of the implications it carries for the potential discovery of planets suitable for human habitation, as well as the possibility of finding extraterrestrial life. It is widely assumed that the beginnings of life anywhere would require some solid ground in which to gain footing, so this discovery strengthens the argument for the existence of life outside of our planet.

As we here at the Austin Planetarium continue our search for some solid ground to build our facility on, we will continue to keep the community updated on our progress and the astronomy and science news of the day. Let us know what you think about the search for extraterrestrial life by commenting on this blog. Stay tuned for more!

For more information on Corot-7b click here.

Raiders of the Lost...Shuttle?

2009-09-15T10:52:00.003-05:00

Officials at NASA today announced that they have opened a registration process that allows educational institutions, museums, and other like-minded institutions to begin screening artifacts from the Space Shuttle program. NASA intends to allow organizations to display these artifacts at their facilities at no cost; except the cost of shipping and the special handling fees that will be necessary for the safe transport of these historical treasures. There will be eligibility guidelines that will be determined by NASA, but their intention is to “ensure broad access to potential shuttle artifacts.”

We here at the Austin Planetarium are very excited at the prospect of having some Space Shuttle artifacts available for display. One of the aspects of our vision for the Austin Planetarium includes the construction of a museum facility focusing on space science, as well as a technology center which will display the hardware that has been utilized in driving technology forward. The Space Shuttle program has been a tremendous asset to the scientific community and a great source of pride for Americans for almost 40 years, and what better way to pay homage than by making the hardware of the program available to the public for exhibition.

Needless to say, these types of artifacts would be perfect for display in our proposed facility. I sure hope there are some left by the time the planetarium is built; otherwise we may find ourselves stuck with the dregs of the program, and decommissioned zero gravity toilets , although important to the space program, just don’t carry the wow factor we hope to induce in our visitors. Thanks for the memories Shuttle Program!

For the full story, and more information on the screening of Space Shuttle artifacts, click here.

Heavenly Bodies

2009-09-11T11:25:00.008-05:00

As you may or may not know, NASA sent its fourth and apparently final service mission to refurbish the orbiting Hubble space telescope in May of this year. Wednesday, NASA released the newest images from the now 19 year old telescope, to the great joy of all those who love astronomy. These images utilize two new instruments, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), that were added to the Hubble array during the STS-125 servicing mission in May, and the results are spectacular.

The new images from the Hubble include a star that has spread its wings like a butterfly in the throes of a 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 600,000 mph death; a quintet of galaxies that appear to dance in formation with one another; and the phenomenon of gravitational lensing produced by galaxy clusters almost 5 billion light-years away. Additionally, NASA has provided some graphical analysis of a few heavenly bodies using data from the newly installed COS. Whether you’re an amateur astronomer or someone who simply enjoys the beauty of the cosmos, there’s something for everyone in this recent round of images.

Images from the Hubble space telescope have always evoked strong responses in those who view them; people’s reactions range from the academically impressed to the religiously ecstatic. These responses are a great reminder of why we want to bring a Planetarium to Austin. The intellectual and emotional heights that can be reached when beholding the cosmos in all its celestial beauty are extremely powerful as a catalyst for introspection and curiosity. This is the goal of the Austin Planetarium, to allow people the opportunities to not only learn more about the world around them, but to feel their place in the universe.

It was the great public outcry that convinced legislators to approve the multi-billion dollar refurbishing of the Hubble space telescope, and we know that it is the same kind of public support we require to realize our dream of building a world-class planetarium for the Central Texas community. Please show your support for the proliferation of science and research by signing up for our newsletter and helping us spread the word about our vision for the Austin Planetarium.

To read more about the Hubble space telescope and view the recent images click here.

Mama, I’m comin’ home…

2009-09-10T10:13:00.004-05:00

September 10, 2009

NASA reports that the shuttle Discovery’s STS-128 crew intends to come home today. After preparing themselves Wednesday, by testing the shuttle’s reaction control system thrusters and performing a check of the flight control systems, the shuttle crew plans to use one of two opportunities to return from their almost 13 day mission. Discovery will be firing its orbital adjustment engines, around noon EDT, to avoid some orbiting debris before their deorbit burn.

Florida, like Texas, is expecting some precipitation today, so the weather is being watched closely out at the Kennedy Space Center where the shuttle will land. We all hope for the safe return of our intrepid explorers. For more details about the landing, and the STS-128 mission, click here.

Google

2009-09-09T09:48:00.006-05:00

About a year ago I started to pay attention to our Google ranking. Of course we are #1 if you Google "Austin Planetarium", but I was more interested in simply the word "planetarium". Would we show up at all? And if so, how far down the list would we be?

Well, to all of our pleasant surprise, we did show up in the ranking. On September 29 2008, we ranked number 172. I know this so precisely, because I took a screen shot of the page back then. You can view that image here.

Over the following months I have been following this, and I believe the latest ranking I saw, several weeks ago, was that we had climbed steadily towards being number 100. This is very good news. It means that we are doing our jobs marketing the planetarium, and that others are writing about us and linking to our site. Also, and this may be the most important one, we are simpler to find.

Needless to say, when I discovered this morning that we climbed to place #10, yes ON THE FRONT PAGE of Google I gasped. WOW! If you Google the word "planetarium" we are now on the very front page of Google!

So, I can say something witty that on the 9th day of the 9th month of 2009, we rank number 10, but I think it is more appropriate to say: only 9 to go!

On the Shoulders of Giants...

2009-09-08T11:45:00.013-05:00

Forget Sagan or Hawking, what about Thales and Aristarchus?! There’s nothing brief about the history of Astronomy. In fact the scientific study of the stars dates far back into human history. That’s exactly the point Professor of Astronomy and Physics James Heath is trying to get across. On September 18th, 2009 Dr. Heath will be giving the first in a series of four talks about the history of astronomy and the scientific method. The first installment in this lecture series will be “On the Shoulders of Giants, Part 1: The Greek Astronomers.” In this lecture Dr. Heath will discuss the roles of some of Greece’s greatest natural Philosophers (Thales, Aristotle, Eratosthenes, and Aristarchus) in the creation of the discipline of Astronomy, and the development of the scientific method.

This event is given in honor of 2009 being the International Year of Astronomy and is intended for Astronomy enthusiasts High School aged and up. The talk will be free and take place at the Cypress Creek campus of ACC, Room 1102 at 7:00 pm September 18th, 2009. Following the talk a “Star Party” observation session will ensue (around 8:30pm); co-hosted by a representative from the Austin Planetarium. Stay tuned for the dates and topics of the other talks!

Permission to come aboard...

2009-09-03T10:34:00.002-05:00

Greetings all, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Tyler Brown and I am the newest addition to the staff of the Austin Planetarium. I come to the planetarium from a professional background in education and software development. I have always been a great proponent of technology as a vessel and catalyst for education; and as a father, educator, technophile, and galactic citizen it is my great pleasure and honor to join this endeavor.

I spent some portion of my childhood in Houston Texas where I regularly attended space and science themed summer classes at the Houston Museum of Natural Science and visited the Johnson Space Center on a semi-regular basis. So I was hooked at an early age. As an adult, the focus of my academic exploration has been Anthropology and English, and working for a museum facility has been a long time ambition of mine. Naturally, when the opportunity to work for the Austin Planetarium arose, I was ecstatic.

I think we’ve all gazed at the heavens in awe at some point, contemplating the universe and our role in this infinitely complex system we call existence. So I am extremely excited about the prospect of serving the Austin Planetarium and Science Museum here in the Capital City, and hopefully gaining some insight into my own queries about the nature of it all.

Oh no, not again!

2009-08-11T07:53:00.003-05:00

Every two years, like clockwork, the same dumb email starts to circulate the internet: Mars will be as big as the Moon! Somehow, that headline grabs the attention of thousands around the planet and entices them to forward it to all of their friends. I keep imagining some evil grinning teenager in a backroom somewhere, thinking "hey the prank worked... AGAIN".

As you already guessed from the tone of the first paragraph, it is indeed not true. Mars will NOT be a large as the Moon, and will never be. It cannot be, because Mars will always be way too far. The email in question is called the Mars Hoax, and has been around for about four or five years now, and it surfaces every two years when Mars is nearing opposition.

The history of the hoax is in my opinion truly a simple typo: one line break too much. The mistake is still there in the current version(s) of the email:

Mars will be as large as the Moon...
With a magnification of 200x

If these two sentences are read as one, they are true and make sense. With a telescope that magnifies 200 times, Mars will can indeed about as large as the Moon. And at 300 times, it will be much bigger then the Moon. Well, duh...

So, please PLEASE do not forward the email and perpetuate this dumb thing. If you are unsure about an email, you can always check snopes.com and check the status of the myth and whether it is true or not. In this case you can read all about the Mars Hoax, and you can see that I have been attempting to debunk this myth for years and years.

What IS true however, is that we have a great chance to see a meteor shower the coming nights! Every august the Earth travels through a part of space where a comet named "Swift-Tuttle" has left behind debris. This debris will burn up in the upper atmosphere and can create a spectacular show of shooting stars. Tomorrow night it should peak where it should be possible to see several dozen per hour. They all seem to come out of the same part of the sky: the constellation of Perseus, hence the name of the shower: The Perseus Meteor Shower.

Observing meteors is very easy. Just lay down a blanket in your yard where you are able to see a goos part of the sky, and look up. The best time for meteor watching is always around 3 in the morning, but this is not to say that it is possible to have some great shooting stars before midnight.

And when you see a shooting star, please wish for a planetarium.

Dell Children's Hospital

2009-08-07T13:08:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I did something that I found exceedingly difficult and at the same time enormously rewarding. I was invited to bring the Magic Planet to the Dell Children's Hospital. They had organized a "Summer Camp" in the hospital to give the kids an opportunity to think about something else, and to pull them out of their environment.

I was very excited to go, but I also was dreading it. I love kids, and to see children in heartbreaking situations is just very difficult to deal with. So, surrounded by about 15 children, some of them hooked to IV's and other machines, we had "Summer Camp" around a make-believe campfire, that some volunteers had thrown together from some colored paper and colored plastic and a hidden flashlight. Blankets on the floor, and even one tent. Yes, three kids fit in the tent, and they did not seem hampered at all by the fact that they were still connected by IV lines. They even managed to close the tent. :-)

So, then after the story teller was done, it was my turn, and for about 45 minutes I was able to bring smiles to these young faces. We saw the Earth with and without clouds, flew to Jupiter and Venus, and eventually flew back home. At one point pointing to Texas at the globe and saying "This is home!", at which a badly burned boy wearing a face mask, exclaimed "I am not home". For some reason that was hilarious to everyone, including his mom and himself.

But I cried when I came home.

The good thing though, other than a lesson in life for me, was that I was able to let these kids think about something else than their surroundings and situation. That makes it all worth it, and I am very happy to say that the Austin Planetarium will do this at the Dell Children's Hospital on a much more regular basis.

Futuristic Community, Frozen in Time

2009-06-18T15:36:00.008-05:00

Throughout history there have been stories of cities lost or abandoned, usually because of their proximity to nuclear test sites, or due to weather disasters. But this "space age" abandoned resort in Sanjhih, Japan literally shows a community truly frozen in time. Built in the late 70's, the government commissioned structures were intended to be a "Futuristic" escape from the hustle and bustle of the city.

It is reported that many strange deaths occurred when the structures where being constructed. and to this day no one knows the actual reasons behind the residents sudden disappearance. Much speculation exists however, from "spirit" sightings, to the possibility that due to the circular nature of the buildings, that poor insulation and climate forces residents to move elsewhere.

After Nearly 30 years, it was announced recently that the buildings are due to be demolished, and while we may never truly know their story, the ghostly photographs of these architectural marvels elicit our imaginations to run wild with ideas, and endless possibilities as what one cities idea of the future could have been.

So what do you think? Could these "Circular Pods" work in your community? Would they "Keep Austin Weird"?

We'd love to hear your comments!

Take a look here for more amazing photographs!

Dirty Little Secret

2009-05-21T13:54:00.005-05:00

This story has been floating around for quite a while in cyberspace, and has also been rather extensively addressed by the media as well.

The story is about the International Space Station (ISS), where a new recycling system has been installed for the astronauts. So far this is a boring story, but what if I told you that the water from the toilet is recycled back to drinking water. Yes, the astronauts are recycling their own urine back into drinking water!

Eeeeeeewwwww, right?

Well… I'll let you in on a dirty little secret. Do you know where your drinking water comes from? If you live in Austin it probably means that it comes from the Colorado River like Town Lake. Where does this water come from? Well, upstream of course, it’s a river after all, and when you travel up-river, you travel through Lakeway, Lago Vista, Marble Falls etc.

Now you may be surprised, but the people there go to the bathroom, and their sewage is processed and released… in… yes? Can you guess it? The very same Colorado River, which is then turned into drinking water.

My purpose is not to startle or to gross you out about drinking water from your kitchen tap, but instead to put things in rational perspective. Recycling in space is much more important than here on earth simply because the astronauts do not have the luxury of making a trip to the supermarket.

In space recycling is a matter of life and death, and in that respect, space travel is the only industry where the goal is to have a 100% level of recycling, and a lot can be learned from the technologies needed, or the experiences learned while doing it.

Ahh... All of this talking has made me thirsty. Well, now I'm off for a nice glass of recycled water from my tap.

Cheers!

On May 8th, The Austin Planetarium boldly went where few have gone before…

2009-05-21T12:21:00.027-05:00

The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum played host to this exciting “Trek” into the final frontier, and geared up for a fund raiser that will eventually lead to the construction of a much needed Planetarium facility here in Austin.

The event had a touch of everything, from one of Kirk’s infamous Orion Slave Girls to improvisational comedians “Start Trekkin”, and a stellar performance by The Austin Wind Symphony, playing what else? The music of “Star Trek”.

The occasion, which had over 600 Austinites in attendance, was held to raise awareness and funding for Austin’s very own Planetarium. Space enthusiast Richard Garriott, Professor of Astronomy and Physics Jim Heath, and Channel 8 News’s very own Burton Fitzsimmons made up a panel of judges “American Idol style” to become critics for an intergalactic costume contest. Where the winner, (Leann Tipton) would prove to be a true environmentalist, and as “green” as one can get.

In addition to the festivities, the Austin Planetarium purchased an entire IMAX showing of “Star Trek” exclusively for the event, and proud VIP guests were ushered excitedly into the theatre at warp speed!

Major media outlets in Austin also covered the event live in their on-air news segments, and the general public who attended the gala continued posting tweets and blogs for several days sharing their experiences with online communities proving their memories will forever live long, and prosper.

NEWS COVERAGE:

Watch KVUE Coverage HERE!
Watch News 8 Austin's Coverage HERE! (Second Video)
KXAN's News Coverage HERE!

NEWS ARTICLES AND REVIEWS:

Austinist
Austin Audience
Austin.com
Austin 360
Austin 360 Article 2
Austin Chronicle
Austin Reader Comments
Austin Decider

Zero-G Raffle Tickets are now available online!

2009-04-17T16:39:00.004-05:00

After some delays, the raffle tickets for the zero-G flight with Richard Garriott are now available online!

Yes, for only $10 you have a chance to experience weightlessness! And here is the best part... your donation will support our efforts to build a Planetarium with a Science & Technology Center for Austin.

The raffle started on Saturday April 11 during Yuri's Night, and will continue through May 8, 7:30 pm. That date is the date for our next event: the opening of the new Star Trek movie! As a matter of fact, we have reserved the full capacity of the 9:30 pm showing of the IMAX theater of the Bob Bullock State History Museum! (I am not going to give more details, but if you like Star Trek, we will have something AWESOME for you in store).

The one other place where you can buy raffle tickets and come talk to us will be May 2nd and 3rd, because once again we will have a large booth at the Spring Pecan Street Festival! Next to raffle tickets, we will be selling T-shirts, mugs and astronaut ice cream. Our booth will be located in the same place as last year: North of 6th street on Neches.

Yuri's Night was AWESOME!

2009-04-14T11:49:00.005-05:00

Wow, it took me wholly two full days to recuperate from Yuri's Night! What a wonderful event it was, and miraculously it stayed dry. We had over a hundred people attending and there was a lot of excitement in the air, both about Richard Garriott's talk and the planetarium project.

Once again, the event photograph was Teresa Harper from Teresa Harper Photography. We are still processing pictures for the gallery, but we do have the first 5 images available:

Also, Michael Barnes of the Austin American Statesman wrote a nice post (with pictures) of the evening, and News8Austin also posted a TV spot online when we handed pieces of the fireball to Eddie Garcia. You can read that article here.

One last quick note... we had a slight delay in posting the raffle ticket sales online. Hopefully by tomorrow you will be able to buy raffle tickets with a chance to win a zero-G flight right on our website!

Tonight is Yuri's Night!

2009-04-11T08:40:00.005-05:00

Tonight is the night!

The doors to Yuris Night will open tonight at 7:30 pm at the Belmont on 6th street. We will be celebrating Yuri Gagarin's historic flight as the first human being in space with, of course, a wonderful Russian theme.

We have Space Tourist Richard Garriott as speaker. He will be talking about his training in Russia, his launch, the flight and landing and will answer questions from the crowd. We will have Russian food, Vodka, live Russian music and dancers.

Plus there will be a silent and live auction as well. We have mission patches from Richard that actually went into space with him, we have meteorites, a 14-piece meteorite collection, a Celestron telescope, a $5000 coupon in architectural design services from Davis Architects and... (drumroll) a nice piece of the fireball that fell over Central Texas on April 15. This is your chance to own a piece of Texas History!

And (second drumroll please), we will be starting our zero-G raffle! For a month we will be selling raffle tickets for $10. The grand prize is a zero-G flight with Richard Garriott! We will be selling the tickets at our events: tonight at Belmont, May 2-3 at the Pecan Street Festival, and May 8 at the Bob Bullock State History Museum with the opening of the new Star Trek Movie. This last event will also be the time when the drawing will take place.

The doors will open tonight at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $25 and will benefit the Austin Planetarium. You can pre-purchase tickets and find more details at yurisnightaustin.com. Tickets are also sold at the Belmont until we have reached maximum capacity. After 10:30 pm the event is free and open to the public.

Hope to see you tonight!

Twitter & Facebook

2009-04-01T14:39:00.003-05:00

As we're getting closer to Yuri's night at April 11, there is a flurry of activities going on. I just received the invite art, we finalized the press release and we're working on last minute sponsors like the Belmont.

At the same time our marketing people are telling me to blog, twitter and update our face book page. So, yes I am twittering (our username is AustinPlanet) and we created also an invite on facebook. Join us as a follower on Twitter or as a fan on facebook!

Hopefully by the end of today will we have updated our web page with more information on Yuri's Night as well as a way for you to purchase tickets!

Congratulations Metze Family!

2009-03-31T15:49:00.004-05:00

Oh my word! It has been so incredibly busy that I have not had the time to post a blog entry for almost a month! But now there are so many exciting things taking place that I am forcing myself to sit down and write.

The first post I want to write is to thank everyone who bought raffle tickets at the Zilker park Kite festival and at Austin under the Stars. Both events were a great success and a lot of fun. The closing event for this raffle was Austin under the Stars and we had a volunteer from the field to pick the winner of the raffle.

The winner was Tiffany Metze, but we are sure that her daughter and husband will be using the scope just as much! They already emailed me full excitement about their first observation results and how the scope performed. We are glad that is is being put to good use!

Talking about raffles... our next one is going to be WAY more spectacular. We will be raffling of a zero-G flight with Richard Garriott. When the raffle tickets are for sale I will be sure to blog about that, so stay tuned!

A mission that will change the way we view our world

2009-03-03T14:19:00.004-06:00

This is an exciting week, because NASA will launch a mission that will undoubtedly radically change the way we view our Universe, and our place in it. The mission in question is the Kepler Mission which is scheduled to launch this Friday, March 6th. On the right you can see an image of the satellite during its assembly.

The Kepler mission is a project where a satellite will observe a total of 100,000 stars for a period of (at least) three years. During this time Kepler will continuously track these 100,000 stars and determine whether or not these stars have observable planets in orbits. The instrumentation of Kepler is so precise, that it should be able to detect Earth-sized planets as well. The million dollar question is going to be: how many will Kepler observe? How rare are earth sized planets in our universe?

The first exo-planet (which is a planet outside our own Solar System) was discovered in 1995 and was 'baptized' as "51 Pegasi b". (See the wikipedia article on this planet) Since that time pretty much to everyone's surprise we have been flooded with similar discoveries. Currently, only 14 years later, we know of the existence of 342 planets, and almost on a daily basis more are reported.

But until now, no Earth sized planets have been detected. The reason for this is simple: our instrumentation is simply not precise enough to detect such small objects across such huge distances. But with Kepler this is going to change. Kepler's instrumentation is precise enough to detect these planets as well.

Needless to say, the number of Earth sized planets Kepler will detect is going to be of enormous importance. We honestly do not know how prevalent these are. The most realistic projections tell us we should expect a couple of dozen of these planets, but we may be surprised and find a hundred... or none. All three possible results would tell us a tremendous amount about our place in the universe. Is the Earth rare? Or are we a dime a dozen?

Of course the next step, after discovery of an Earth sized planet, is to do much more detailed observations and see if we can detect whether the planet has an atmosphere and whether we can measure if Oxygen, which could indicate life, is present. Either way... the coming three years are going to be quite exciting, and I am sure I will be writing about the mission as the discoveries start pouring in.

Kite Fest this Sunday

2009-02-27T08:27:00.007-06:00

This Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm, the Austin Planetarium will have a information booth for the fourth time at the 81st Annual Zilker Park Kite Festival!

Once a year, the Exchange Club of Austin holds a kite festival which attracts about 30,000 visitors. This year things will be a little different because the normal location of the event (north of Barton Springs Road) is under construction, so this year we'll be on the other side, i.e. south of Barton Springs Road.

Just like the past three years, we will be raffling off a $500 Celestron Telescope! Raffle tickets are $10 and of course your money will support our efforts to build a Planetarium and Science & Technology Center in Austin. There is also some good news here, because Celestron has agreed to sponsor the Austin planetarium at our next events and will donate telescope(s) directly to us.

Additionally we have our always popular "Space Wheel of Fortune" set up, and kids can spin for free prices. We have a new batch of beautiful posters from NASA, we have new Austin Planetarium bookmarks, planetarium mugs and much more! What is new this year is that we also will be flying our Austin Planetarium kite!

Although the kite festival is a free event, you can buy kites and there are many wonderful food vendors (plus we're selling raffle tickets) so do bring some money. (Last year there were some ATM's on the field) Also, do remember that if you plan to visit, that Barton Springs Road will be closed off during the day. For more details on the event you can visit the kite fest web page.

Hope to see you there this Sunday!

PS:
If you mention this blog we'll give you a 50% discount for an Austin Planetarium T-shirt, $10 instead of the normal $20.

One in a million

2009-02-16T12:24:00.003-06:00

WOW Who would have thought that after writing the previous post on the satellite collision, things would all of the sudden go viral? I guess you have heard by now about the fireball that was seen over the Austin sky last Sunday. My phone started to ring at around noon, and I was left scrambling trying to answer the question: “what was it”?

My first hunch was that it was not related to the satellite collision. The Earth is big, space is vast, and the very chance that a couple of days later things burn up straight over our heads was simply too coincidental. But of course… it’s not impossible. So, after doing some research it started to look like I was wrong after all and the two events did seemed connected. In that respect I was in good company, because the famous “Bad Astronomer” Phil Plate had to make the correction as well and was as surprised as me.

So, I was interviewed by KXAN over the phone (article here) and then did an evening interview with KEYE42 (story here and video here). (By the way… recognize the image on KEYE and the image I used in the previous blog post? I made the suggestion to put it on the green screen and they enthusiastically complied. Glad I was wearing a green shirt...)

And today on Monday we have more updates. Apparently the original FAA report to be on the lookout for debris was false. Also, looking more at the video shot by News8Austin, the object is moving way too fast for it to be connected with the satellite collision. Satellites move at approximately 17000 mph, a meteorite easily can travel at more then 100,000 miles per hour. So, the conclusion is that the object quite likely was indeed a “shooting star”; a meteorite burning up in the atmosphere. But a spectacularly bright one!

So… now I am off to News8Austin for an interview, and after that another interview with KXAN! See how exciting astronomy can be?

When things go bump in the night

2009-02-14T09:43:00.004-06:00

A couple of days ago, the news reported that a Russian Satellite and an American satellite had collided about 500 miles above the Earth. This surprised and shocked me because this had never happened before, and extensive monitoring takes place to prevent issues like this. It is also very bad news.

As it turned out, the Russian Satellite was an old defunct satellite, but the American was a very modern Iridium Satellite. When you believe movies Satellites are slow moving objects that sometimes can be used to jump on to when your space ship is damaged. Unfortunately the reality is a bit harsher. The first problem is that these things move, and I mean MOVE. For example the International Space Station travels faster then 17,000 miles per hour, and the satellites in question moved at similar speeds. Now I do not know if the satellites collided head on, but if you see what a mess a plane crash gives at a mere 600 mph, you can take it home that this crash was incredibly violent.

The result was indeed two debris clouds, and two totally destroyed satellites. The big problem lies in the debris cloud… Because of the collision these bits and pieces will no longer travel in the same path as the satellites, but will enter into other orbits, and quite likely, and up in the orbits of other satellites where they pose significant danger for new collisions. The biggest fear is collisions with the International Space Station, but scientists think the probability of that quite low. But it wouldn’t be the first time when a manned space vehicle was hit by a micro meteorite, with near disastrous results.

So what is the chance this will happen again? Unfortunately, as we send more satellites into space, this problem grows bigger and bigger. Take a good look at the image below (click on it for the large resolution). That is an image compiled by the European Space Agency of active satellites and space debris. Space might be big, but as you can see, things are getting quite messy up there. Scary!

HAM's Night

2009-01-26T18:57:00.004-06:00

Coming Friday, January 30th, we're organizing something that, as far as I know, has never been organized before: HAM's Night.

Actually, the story starts with Yuri's night. Yuri's Night is celebrated every year on April 12, and this event is to commemorate the first human being in space: Yuri Gagarin. On the twelfth of April, 1961 Yuri became the first human being to travel into space. Of course, this added insult to injury after the Russians also launched the first satellite, but there is actually quite some proof that the US government simply waited until the Russians had made this move. There were quite some concerns about what would happen if an American Astronaut would be launched into space, and when the craft would be over Russia God knows what would have happened. Is space above Russia still considered Russia? Do they have the right to shoot it down? Whatever the reason, history is simple: Yuri was the first human being in space, and when he was up there he related to ground control:

"The Earth is blue. How wonderful. It is amazing."

But, Yuri was not the first hominid that was launched into space, this was done several months earlier by the United States. On January 31, we launched a chimpanzee into space, and it lived to tell the tale! At launch time, chimp only was designated by a number: 65, but when he landed and all was well he was christened HAM, an acronym for the lab that prepared him for his historic mission — the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, located at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

So, to celebrate this occasion we decided this would be a perfect reason to do a fundraiser, and HAM's night was born! We like to keep Austin weird, and we felt this would be the perfect venue to express that sentiment and at the same time spread the awareness of our project and hopefully raise some funds.

In that respect things are going very well. The owners of the Molotov Lounge that are hosting the event, offered to do a revenue share of the bar proceedings and donate that to the Austin planetarium. Also, 30 minutes after I had added it to the KUT event calendar, KUT was calling with the request to make a Public Service Announcement. This will air for 3 days leading up to the event.

So... come join us at the Molotov Lounge for an Austin Spectacular event. Come meet Ham, rigged up in his rocket, have some wonderful ice cream from Amy's Icecreams. The party will be from 6pm till midnight, and the entrance is free!

To see the invite you can visit hamsnight.com. Come show your support and I sincerely hope the place will be packed!

The Scientific Method

2009-01-19T15:51:00.004-06:00

OK I admit it: I am disappointed.

If you have been following this blog, then you probably read about the 'meteorites' I found in Big Bend national Park. Of course, because it is a national park, I had to turn the specimens over to the park rangers and they would send them to the park scientist and geologist to take a look. And boy did they take a look! Last week I received a very lengthy report from the geologist that looked these stones over in detail, with the right equipment and materials to see what the origin was. Well, to make a long story short (see details below): they weren't meteorites.

Of course, as an astronomer, I find this disappointing (as a matter of fact, so was the geologist), but at the same time it also made me smile. Science, and the Scientific Method, are incredibly important things, but unfortunately often misunderstood. But right here we have a great example of how things should work. I make a claim, and someone else looks at my claim and comes with a conclusion. This may, or may not, fit my claim. The fact that I want it to be a meteorite is of no importance. It would be silly to put my head in the sand and assume it did not happen.

But hey, I was right about one thing: I indeed do not know enough about geology!

Excerpts from the email of the Big Bend Geologist:

1. As you may know, over 80% of meteorite falls are chondrites (stony meteorites). After grinding and polishing a portion of several of your specimens no chondrules were noted. It might be possible that the specimens are from an achondrite (stony meteorites without chondrules -which primarily come from the Moon or Mars) but these account for only about 8% of falls and are therefore rare.

2. Iron meteorites (nickel-iron) account for about 5% of falls and are even more rare. I also investigated your fragments for a Widmanstatten pattern using ferric chloride and hydrochloric acid as an etchant (nitric acid is not the 'only' choice but one of several) because I do not have nitric acid on hand. After the etching process a Widmanstatten pattern was not observed.

3. The area that you reported finding the fragments is located within a thick series of marine carbonate rocks from the Boquillas, Buda and Santa Elena limestones. These formations commonly produce silicic and iron rich minerals as nodules within cavities formed by groundwater penetrating these facies. Many of the iron-rich nodules will pseudomorph (such as after pyrite) as they weather out, which create orange, metallic 'nuggets'. There are many places in the Park's carbonate rocks where these nodules can be found. Many are situated on top of a 'deflated surface'. Basically, these nodules weather out of the limestones (calcium carbonate) however they are more resistant to erosion than the parent rock. As more 'nuggets' weather out (remember, there used to be at least a thousand feet of overlying limestone in that area) they become more concentrated on the ground and locally produce areas with high concentrations.

4. (On my blog post: why a meteorite) Actually, that crust you see is not an 'ablation crust' from burning or charring. It is in fact a crust of small, very well shaped, pseudomorphed crystals that formed in an aqueous environment. I observed these with a stereo microscope but a hand lens would work as well. A second fragment also has a very nice calcite crystal formation within a small cavity within the body of the fragment. These associated crystals are consistent with a local geologic source for the material. I also noted your observation regarding the broken surfaces on some fragments (caused by tidal forces during entry and a resultant explosion. What is taking place here (I believe) is actually the slow process of erosion (thermal cycles, wet/dry sequences, freezing etc.) which break these nodules down along microscopic joints within. Furthermore, in many cases geochemical variations do not allow for the growth of visible crystals over an entire nodule. In other cases crystal growth varies from the center of the nodule outwardly. As a result, crystal size can therefore vary quite a bit even in a small nodule (like the one pictured).

5. As the result of my findings and discussing this with several qualified geologists I elected not to visit the locality as I believe these are not meteorites.

Moon Phases

2009-01-08T10:23:00.005-06:00

For some time I have been alluding to adding an almanac feature to the planetarium's website (to display when the Sun comes up and when she sets, when the Moon rises and sets, and also what the current phase of the Moon is). Of course there are many websites that display this information and it is printed in almost all newspapers, but if one page should have it, it should be a planetarium web page. As a matter of fact, a planetarium should be the source of this information for the local newspapers and news outlets!

This actually reminds me of a story that was told by Martin George from New Zealand back when he was a director of a small planetarium down under. He received a call from the local newspaper, asking him if he could tell them what time the Sun would rise and set the following day. So he looked it up and told them the exact times. The following day he again received the same call, and on day three again. At that point Martin asked what the deal was, because this paper had always printed this information. So... before they were calling Martin, where did they get there information from? "Well... you know", came the answer, "we just added a minute or two every day and nobody complained". The solution was of course that Martin provided them with tables of that data on a monthly basis, and was assured of the correct times being printed in the paper.

Anyway, I have been working very hard on scripts that will calculate this automatically. The Sun was the first that was finished and after that I tackled the Moon. As it turns out, the Moon is very difficult because the motion of our celestial neighbor is quite complex. The orbit of the Moon is not a circle but an ellipse. So, sometimes the Moon is closer to the Earth and at other times further away. Additionally the plane of the ellipse is somewhat tilted as well. And to make the matters even worse, the ellipse itself is rotating - it is not constant!

Under normal circumstances we are not aware of these motions, but there is an easy way where I can show you some interesting things about the Moon that you probably weren't aware of. One of the things I have been working on is a series of images depicting the different Moonphases. I created a total of 28 images, from New Moon to Full and back to New again. When we put these 28 images in a row and create an animation from it we get the following image:

Of course the ring in the image is simply to display the outline of the Moon, so when the Moon is new, we can see something more then simply a black square. The other thing you see is that the Moon wobbles! This is called "Libration".

One motion of the Moon I removed for this animation. These individual images will be printed in a monthly calendar, and for that reason all the images should be the same size. But because the
orbit of the Moon is an ellipse and sometimes the Moon is closer and will look bigger then other times. For this reason I had to resize most images to exactly match each other. A beautiful animation (>9 MB) where in addition of the libration also the effects of the ellipse are visible can be seen here at wikipedia.

So, I have some more work left, but very soon this almanac feature will become an integral part of our website, and hopefully it will be of great use. When it is done and added to the site, I will post another blog about it.

The pictures are here!

2009-01-06T15:41:00.005-06:00

Last month the Austin planetarium hosted our very first fund raising event, and I am happy to report that it was a huge success. Of course we all worked very hard to ensure this, but it is always a big relief when afterwards you can say: a job well done!

We had over fifty guests, and the venue, the back patio at the Belmont, turned out to be perfect as well. We raised over $60,000 and we received many compliments from the guests about the party. We especially would like to thank Blue Note Bakery for creating the incredible desserts and Teresa Harper Photography for the event photography.

We are already organizing our next event: HAM's night, scheduled for January 31, but I will blog about that in the near future, because that one definitely deserves its own post!

Why a meteorite?

2008-12-26T14:46:00.015-06:00

After my exciting discovery in Big Bend National Park (see post below) people have been asking: "how can you tell that this is a meteorite?" Which is indeed a very good question. As I stated before, my knowledge of geology is quite lacking, but there are some telltale signs with the stones I have in my hand. First, let me post a sharper version of the image. (The battery of the camera was on its last legs, so unfortunately, a lot of the pictures taken turned out to be blurry because the auto-focus could not keep up).

As you can see I have seven pieces in my hand. The first hint that these are not normal rocks is that they exhibit several characteristics of metal: they're heavier then stone and they're (somewhat) rusted. Iron, for example, rusts to an extent that even in the desert, a piece of metal will completely disintegrate in a couple of centuries. Iron turns into a crumbly rust that is washed away by rain or blown around by the wind. So, although the surface of the pieces have a rust color, they have not come close to disintegration. This means that the pieces of metal have not been lying around for very long, maybe a century, maybe more, but not for millenia.

Now, take a better look at a closeup of the second largest stone:

Can you see that on the top it has a different looking surface? You can see the front is smooth and curved, but the top is rough and dark. If this were due to weathering, we would expect to see this on more then one surface. But look how the edge from rough to smooth is sharply defined. What you are seeing on the top, is the area of the meteorite that was on the outside, i.e. it was burnt. As the meteorite hurls through the atmosphere, it gets incredibly hot. A lot of the meteorite simply "burns up" or vaporizes. In this case the meteorite was big enough to survive re-entry but then exploded. That is exactly what you see here: one side is burnt and charred, and sharply defined edges where the metal was ripped apart by the explosion.

Those sharp edges you can see clearly in both of the largest stones, and although I do not have a picture of this, the largest stone was also charred on the bottom, just like the image above.

Another interesting thing visible in the picture, is the rounded piece on the right. It looks different; no sharp edges or charring visible. Of course I do not know for sure, but it simply looks like a solidified piece of metal. It almost looks like a drop that was once liquid, and is now solid again. Given the tremendous heat and forces that come into play with a meteorite fall, molten metal is something that is quite likely to occur.

Lastly, if these pieces were from geological sources (i.e. not a meteorite) we would expect other minerals to be inside the metal; it would be contaminated. These pieces look pure and clean, they consist of only one type of material, not a mixture of rock and metal. Although not impossible to form naturally, it is unlikely.

So, in a nutshell, this is how I was able to determine in the field, without any further tests, that these are meteorites. Does this mean we are 100% sure these are actually meteorites?

Well, no.

Not yet at least. There is a test for metal meteorites. When a meteorite forms in space, they form in a free fall environment, just like astronauts in the Space Shuttle. Under those conditions metal forms a crystal structure called Widmanstatten pattern after the discoverer of these. This is what they look like:

For this you need to cut the meteorite, polish it, and then etch it with nitric acid. If the pattern shows, you have proven beyond a doubt that the stone is an actual meteorite.

Wonder if Self Chem has Nitric Acid available?

Breaking the rules

2008-12-22T14:12:00.003-06:00

OK I admit it: ... I broke the rules. I am not sure if I actually broke federal law, but if so, I am confessing to that as well. Sometimes you just have to make the call, and in this case I decided that breaking the rules was justified.

As I stated in my last blog post, I took a couple days off to go hiking in Big Bend National Park. I do this every early December when the weather is perfect and the park is nearly deserted. This year I decided to go hiking on a trail I had never ventured on before, far from the beaten path and deeply soaked with spectacular scenery. As it turned out, the temperature was near 80 degrees and the was hike a lot more strenuous then I had expected, so, after about four miles I decided to cut the hike short by choosing an alternative route.

I am not a geologist and I am sad to admit that I know way too little about that exciting subject, other then to classify something as: “Yup, that’s a rock all right”. However, for some reason I noticed this one stone that stood out to me as something completely out of place, and I picked it up. It was a bit bigger then my thumb, and noticed immediately the excessive weight: I had found a meteorite! Cool! A meteorite….and a nice sized one too!

My second stroke of luck came when I decided to look around to see if I could find more, and to my amazement within 5 minutes I had found seven sizable fragments. Further examining the ground with renewed interest I then saw dozens more laying around. At that point I realized I had found a site where in the past a meteorite had exploded.

Now, I know that the rules state that you are not allowed to remove or take anything from the park. If you find something interesting you must leave it at the site and notify the park rangers about your find. As you can guess from the title, I decided to take the seven meteorite fragments I found to turn them in at the park headquarters. The reason for this was that I think that if someone makes a rather audacious claim (I found an impact site that no one knows about!!!) they better have something to back it up, like a handful of extraterrestrial pieces of metal.

So, off to Panther Junction I went, and reported the find. Expecting to be shackled and fined, I was thankfully greeted with enthusiasm. As it turns out, people have been searching for an impact site in the park because there is an account of large impact around 1910. (Google has part of this account available here). The park ranger showed me where they had been searching for a crater, and the site was several miles south of where I found the fragments. Of course we’re not sure yet if the site I found is at all related to the impact of 1910, but it sure would be coincidental to have two events like that so close to each other.

So… hopefully I can go back to scope out the area better. Although I was smart enough to look for other fragments, I never though about actually looking for a crater. Of course I have been studying aerial maps of the area to see if something is visible there, but no luck yet….

And through all this I keep thinking of J.O Langford, who witnessed the meteorite impact in 1910. I can only imagine how frightened he must have been. As a matter of fact, a couple of weeks ago another meteorite fall was caught on camera in Canada:

The one in Canada was tiny compared to the one in Big Bend (makes sense, after all everything is bigger in Texas, right?) but seeing this video might give you more of an idea of how overwhelming an event like that is. Normally, as science progresses and we understand better how something works (like lightning), they become less scary. However meteorites are something that the more I learn about it, the more frightening I find it.

Next steps: I’m planning a return trip to Big Bend with a metal detector and high-resolution maps. At least I know where to look now!

Events

2008-12-10T14:12:00.006-06:00

It has been a while since my last blog post, which means that I am either bored and have nothing to write about, or that I am so busy that I simply do not have the time to write. Well, I am happy to say that it is definitely the latter.

The biggest thing that is going on right now is that we're organizing a cocktail party for December 11 (yes that is tomorrow). The party is to kick off our Founders Circle which is our first round of (large) fundraising. Hopefully after the event I will be blogging in more detail about this, because we definitely have some cool things cooked up! With a little luck we will be able to announce some large donations by then as well, so stay tuned!

In addition we are also working on our new website. I have blogged about this before and things are moving forward tremendously. And although the designer does not like it that I am showing something that is not finished yet, I will show you a part of the new homepage:

As you can see, there are many elements that are from the current website, but many new ones as well. We have a filled background, we have a star field, and the banner images are beautifully curved. I can't wait for the site to be launched!

Oh yes, and because it is the end of the year, we also sent out several hundred letters with donation requests. And we're also interviewing and hopefully hiring an assistant for the planetarium office. So yes, things have been rather hectic!

I'm happy to say that after the cocktail party, I'm on my way to Big Bend National Park: hiking in the desert and at night looking at wonderfully dark skies. So after 4 days of relaxing in the West Texas desert I should be full of energy again and start off 2009 in a spectacular way!

Let's build a planetarium!

Is it the time of the year for UFOs or something?

2008-11-21T10:55:00.012-06:00

If you have been reading this blog, you will remember the posting from a couple of weeks ago where I was interviewed by Mary Lee of KXAN about a UFO sighting. Since that time a couple of things have happened related to this story.

First off, I received an email from Carl who is the guy that shot the actual footage. He stated that he had a lot more and wanted me to see it, plus he stated that he sees UFOs almost every evening, plus his friends see them too. Especially that last statement is especially interesting. If only one person is seeing flying things it can easily be discarded, as the guy must be drunk/stoned/on medication/etc. But if multiple people are seeing things they cannot explain it gains a lot of credence.

So, last week, together with board member Lary Cotten, we decided to head out and meet Carl and his friends, look at the footage and see for ourselves. Carl showed us a lot of very interesting footage (hopefully I will be able to post some of it on this blog in the future) and I honestly have no idea what he captured on camera. Two stood out, the first where he is following this light and all of the sudden you see an airplane crossing his field of view. This was quite spectacular, but more importantly it proved that it was not an airplane that he was following. The other was where he followed one of the objects on another evening and it came so low that it was actually between the trees. At that point you can see that the camera is in focus and you get a much better perspective of scale etc. Then all of the sudden the object makes a movement in the shape of a 'fishhook' or an upside down question mark, and flies off.

Although the footage is interesting, it is not proof of anything. It still can be an elaborate hoax. That evening we did not see anything interesting or slightly UFO-like. Anything we saw flying was recognized and Identified or therefore an IFO.

Now fast forward to yesterday. I received a call from KEYE news. They had taken a look at some of his new footage (yes, Carl is still filming and still seeing things) and they are very much interested. They asked me if I would like to be there as well and see if we can spot something together. In other words, this story has not ended yet, and I will be cold tonight staring up to see if I see something I do not understand.

And then this morning CNN posted this video with Miles O'Brien. Is there something in the water or something?

... to be continued

UPDATE

Found this TV interview with actual footage from Carl.

Copernicus Found!

2008-11-20T13:29:00.008-06:00

Three years ago in northern Poland a skull was found in the cathedral of Frombork and the suspicion was that the skull was that of the famous astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Today the news broke that it is indeed his skull that was found (see reconstruction on the right), because they were able to match DNA form the skull with some DNA located in one of the books he owned for many years. Until now we did not know where he had been buried, but now we know: in the cathedral of Frombork, Poland.

Copernicus is the famous astronomer that published "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), which is the book that put the Sun in the center of our Solar System instead of the Earth. For the longest time he did not dare to publish his book because it was not in accordance with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. But eventually he did decide to publish it with a preface where he indicated it was a theory not a fact. (Sound familiar doesn't it??)

Despite this 'disclaimer' the church banned the book after all, and it was placed on the list of 'forbidden books'. He died shortly after the publication of his book in 1543. Copernicus was finally reinstated by the church in 1992. Yes: nineteen ninety two: a full four hundred and forty nine years after the poor guys death the church finally stated: "eehhh yeah he was right... sorry".

You can find the full article on the find here. (Note that the map they use is wrong though; it is Warsaw, not Frombork, that is the capital of Poland)

See the ISS, the Space Shuttle and a toolbag

2008-11-19T11:07:00.010-06:00

Tonight we have a wonderful opportunity to see the International Space Station (ISS) from Austin. At 17 past 6, the ISS will rise in the southwest and rapidly travel to almost straight overhead in about 3 minutes. Then 2 minutes later the ISS will set in the northeast and disappear from view.

This viewing will be even better then normal, because as you may have read, the Space Shuttle is currently attached to the station. This makes the station a lot bigger, resulting in more reflected light and increasing the spectacle for us down below.

In addition to the ISS and the Shuttle, there is actually a third object floating around as well: a lost tool bag. This morning one of the astronauts lost hold of a tool bag needed for her spacewalk. Normally, this is not a problem because it should be tethered to the space suit. Unfortunately also that failed, and the bag floated happily off by itself.

Although the bag is quite too small to be seen, the ISS with the space shuttle is definitely worth seeing. Look for the very bright "star" racing across the sky, and feel free to post your thoughts and observations to this blog. I also copied a small star chart from the heavensabove.com website:

Coming Soon: A New Website

2008-11-18T16:04:00.002-06:00

Five years ago when I started with the Austin Planetarium project, I started with designing a website. I was working as a computer programmer for UT-System at the time, so that was the logical step for me to take. For five years this website functioned more-or-less OK but it was time for a major overhaul.

The first step in this process was to design a new logo. This logo we have been using now for several months and we received many positive reactions and comments on it. We knew it was working when at the Pecan Street festival people were buying our T-shirts with the logo without knowing who we were or what we are trying to accomplish for Austin. They purely bought it for the cool looking logo.

At the same time, we redesigned the website to look at least a little bit like our brochure. We did not have the time to do this properly, and the current website is a band aid until we are ready to launch the new site. Actually, the current site is identical to the old one, we only removed the old imagery, put in a new logo and menu, et voila! The only truly different thing is the front page, and if you like that, you will be blown away by the new design.

The site is being designed by Jake Maymar, one of the founders of NAKA Media, and I have had the pleasure to look over his shoulder as he has been working on the site for the past weeks, and I can tell you that the result will be incredibly beautiful. Insetad of a simple square image, things will have curves like planetary surfaces, and we will also have a starfield on the top of the screen, plus a much more logical and user friendly layout of the site.

If all goes well, we will launch the new site early December. Stay tuned!

The Dutch Cowboy

2008-10-31T15:40:00.005-05:00

This year I felt I was challenged to dress up for Halloween. I normally do not particularly enjoy dressing up for Halloween, but after going to the great concert by the Austin Wind Symphony and seeing some spectacular star-trek themed outfits, I decided that it would be only fair for me to dress up this year.

As it happened, my parents had sent me an item for my birthday from the Netherlands, which made me laugh out loud when I unwrapped the package. They were fuzzy "wooden" shoes, colored brightly orange which is the national color of the Netherlands. So the plan was hatched: I will be the Dutch Cowboy.

So, for all the people that dared me to post this. Here are the pictures:

The only thing that is missing is a large Saturn shaped belt buckle. OK maybe next year.

UFO has landed

2008-10-30T14:07:00.004-05:00

Breaking News:

UFO over Austin has landed and Alien talks with the Austin Planetarium crew. Irrefutable proof below.

And he (she?) even wears an Austin Planetarium T-shirt

UFO sighting over Austin

2008-10-27T13:52:00.005-05:00

Today I received an interesting phone call from Mary Lee at KXAN: was I willing to show up at the studio and look at UFO footage that was shot over Austin and give my opinion? That sounded like fun, so off I went.

The video was very interesting... and it is still an UFO, meaning that I was not able to identify what was caught on camera. The mistake most people make is thinking that UFO equals little green men from Mars. But all UFO means is an Unidentified Flying Object. If you see something in the sky and you can't place it, by definition it's a UFO.

So... the video. It starts with three lights which possibly could be stars (the bottom of the constellation Cassiopeia?) but that part was rather unclear. The lights are motionless, not too interesting, but then in the end all of the sudden a light is moving and makes big zig-zag movements. The filmers got lucky, because in the background you can see power lines which give a frame of reference. At least we know the camera was not being zig-zagged; the light itself is moving. It was obvious that it was not a movement an airplane or helicopter could have made. The other interesting thing was that at one point the object resolves into multiple dots of light (two possibly three).

So, what was it? Well, the short answer is: I do not know. To me, it did not look like a regular airplane or helicopter, and if it was I feel sorry for the passengers, because that did not look like comfortable flying to me. There is always a possibility of a meteorite, because as I have seen for myself, they can do pretty cool things while flying through the atmosphere. They can change directions when a piece breaks off, they can rotate making it look like small zig-zag movement, and they can also bounce off the atmosphere giving the impression that they move from left to right. However, again, to me it did not seem that would explain this video.

Of course there is always another possibility, which is a prank where the neighbor flies a small radio operated plane with some lights attached.

However, maybe, just maybe we're getting some extraterrestrial help in keeping Austin weird.

KXAN posted a small article about it here. When they upload the interview and the footage I will update this posting.

Congratulations Austin!

2008-10-23T11:04:00.004-05:00

It took some scheduling and rescheduling, but I was finally able to meet the winner of the $500 telescope we raffled off at last Pecan Street festival. Quite appropriately the winner's name is "Austin".

Austin is six years old and has a keen interest in space and astronomy. Needless to say he was incredibly excited to receive this wonderful telescope, and we're sure he will be using this for many years to come.

I want to thank the more the 200 people that entered in the raffle. Your donation is greatly appreciated and together we will make the dream of a planetarium a reality. We just sent in the paperwork for the spring Pecan street, and we'll be sure to once again have a raffle. If everything works out, we might be raffling off more then one telescope!

We're a winner!

2008-10-16T13:00:00.007-05:00

Two days ago I received an invitation to a party hosted by the Austin Chronicle, to celebrate all the "Best of Austin" winners of 2008. Quite frankly I had no clue what this event was (bad me!), but hey, a party with a chance to network and handout some brochures and T-shirts seemed like a fun and valuable time to me.

So, together with Lary Cotten who serves as secretary on our board, we ventured down to the Long Center last night. At the registration table I came to the shocking realization that we were actually winners of a Best Of Austin award! We won the "Best Starry-Eyed Dream" award. Their write up of our project is also very nice. I remember talking to a photographer from the Chronicle at the Pecan Street, and I guess he was impressed with what he saw.

Needless to say I am incredibly pleased. We have a new logo and are working on a new look and feel of the website, have an incredible looking new brochure, new T-shirts and mugs and now we have a Best Of Austin award too! Kudos to the entire Austin Planetarium team!

In addition we met Mayor Will Wynn at the party. He was glowing all over, because he had just gotten off the "phone" with Richard Garriott who is floating around in space as we speak. Thankfully the Mayor had indeed heard about the Austin Planetarium project and was positive about meeting with us in the near future.

An award and a meeting with the Mayor of Austin... what a great evening!

On Planetariums and Politics

2008-10-11T20:53:00.008-05:00

It took me a while to gather my thoughts and courage to blog about this, but given that I have heard from quite a few of readers about this, I decided it was about time. If you have been keeping up with the presidential campaign rhetoric you will have noticed that we (the planetarium subject) have broken through on the national political scene.

Let me first start on a cautionary word... for myself that is. The thing is: I need to stay neutral. As Executive Director I am trying to achieve this grand plan of building a planetarium and science museum for Austin, and I will be talking to a lot of people. Actually, that should be phrased as: A LOT OF PEOPLE: staggering numbers, of all walks of life and with a vast variety of backgrounds and opinions, and somehow I need to keep them all happy and pleased. This is Texas y'all, and Texans are not necessarily famous for keeping their opinions to themselves. But hey, I love a challenge, so…bring it on! Now again; I am not complaining; but needless to say, I better stay away from discussing politics.

This used to be quite easy, until last week when the second presidential debate took place, and Senator McCain blamed Senator Obama for introducing an earmark of three million dollars for a planetarium overhead projector for the Adler planetarium in Chicago, Illinois.

As it happened, I was at the Adler planetarium earlier this year and even blogged about it. The Adler planetarium is a great facility, which is not too surprising given its history and location. Dang, can you imagine the Austin Planetarium being built on a 1000 ft pier into Lake Travis? (I for one would give my eye-teeth for that (imaginary) location) But I digress...

Checking the facts after the debate, Senator McCain was indeed correct that there was a three million earmark proposed for the Adler planetarium. However not for an overhead projector, but a whole overhead system, more commonly referred to as a full-dome system by planetarium insiders. Needless to say, the Chicago media jumped on this as well and interviewed my colleague at the Adler planetarium Dr. Paul Knappenburger about this issue.

So... now the difficult part of this blog. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Austin Planetarium were to receive three million dollars of taxpayers’ money to build this great educational facility? Do we deserve that? Do we deserve it more than, for example, Chicago, IL, which has already such a fantastic facility?

Well in my opinion, the short answer is: yes, that would be wonderful.

But the rub for me is that I am shocked that a city like Chicago, and a facility like the Adler Planetarium, would need a federal earmark like that. If they cannot raise money with an existing facility to prove what they can do with that money, and with a population more then four times the population of Austin proper... boy are we in trouble or what!?

So, although I selfishly support the earmark, I question it as well. I am sure there are many other planetarium facilities in the US that are in more dire need for funding then the Adler. Given that Austin is the largest city in the US without a planetarium, I think we, most of all, would need (federal) help... Right?

The core of the issue though is whether or not there is enough support. If the Adler is unable to raise the needed three million, there is something wrong. Either their project does not warrant the cost, or they have not done their leg-work to see if things can be raised locally. I cannot come to any other conclusion.

So, the last thing I would like to ask of you when you read this is to make a statement: show your support for our project! Together we can make the Austin Planetarium happen, and a lot of small donations is going a long way. Please consider signing up for a $25 per month donation, or even a $10 a month! Let's show that the Austin Planetarium is supported by us all!

PS Dear President McCain/Obama (alphabetical order if you were wondering) please ignore any and all statements above and please approve a three million dollar earmark for the Austin Planetarium. Thank you.

Pecan Street Post Mortem

2008-10-06T14:07:00.014-05:00

What a difference six months makes!

Six months ago we decided to rent a space at the Pecan Street festival. This turned out to be a big success and we had a lot of people in our booth, but we lacked some signage, and we were very surprised to find that the location given to us had two sides. But taken the fact we had not planned for that and did not have enough tables, we decided to be just open on one side.

But this time around we were fully prepared, and boy did it show. In addition, before the event, I was also invited by News 8 Austin for an interview, which also steered a lot of extra people to our booth. Our new logo was a *hit*. We received many positive comments and people bought a T-shirt with the logo without knowing who we were or why we were there; they just wanted the cool shirt!

We earned more than double what we earned last time, and informed hundreds of people of our project. Also our newsletter mailing list grew by a whopping 50%! This is very important, because we want to make our mailing list our primary tool for outreach and project updates. So, if you receive our newsletter, make sure to forward it to your friends and family who may be interested in our project.

We also have a winner of the $500 telescope: Austin Engelhardt, from Austin TX. Austin is 6 years old and is very much interested in astronomy. Hopefully he (and his mom) will pick up the scope this week. So make sure to check back to this blog to see some pictures of a very happy boy with his new scope!

Pecan Street Festival, day I

2008-09-20T20:46:00.006-05:00

WOW What a day!

I have been on my feet from 5 am this morning, started setting up the both at 6 am, and right now it is almost 9 pm and I just got home. Standing on my feet the whole day long talking to hundreds of interested people, and I am at the same time exhilarated and absolutely dead-beat.

Showing off our new logo and brochure was great hit and we received many very positive responses. Lary Cotten, one of our board directors, had done an absolutely fantastic job on our signs and posters. This was actually to an extent that we received quite some times the question if we actually sold the posters! Ha ha, well we don't, but next time we sure will!

Of course there is another day of this festival left, so I better call it a day. But if you're curious how things look like in our booth, check out the following video:

If you have time this Sunday, come check out our awesome booth and new marketing materials and pick up a T-shirt to show your support for this exciting project! Our booth is located at 6th and Neches.

A new website!!

2008-09-19T20:26:00.002-05:00

WOOHOO!

Wow, what a change! From the website that has been the face for this organization for over 5 years to... this! A new logo, a completely new look and feel... once again: what a change!

But we're far from done. As you can see form this blog, it does not look like the website at all. Also, other then the front page, the rest of the pages have not changed much, albeit the header is different and the left navigation menu has disappeared. In other words: a lot more work needs to be done!

But the timing is very tight, because we wanted to be ready for this fall's Pecan Street Festival! We will be selling T-shirts, mugs, Astronaut Ice Cream all with our brand new logo on it! Plus you have a chance to win a $500 telescope! Raffle tickets are $10 and the drawing will be this Monday right after the festival. Come check out our booth, we'll be at 6th and Neches!

Are we going to die tomorrow?

2008-09-09T12:24:00.001-05:00

No.

Or at least, not due to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that will run tomorrow for the first time. It is amazing though how much bad reporting is done by the media outlets and the level of understanding is staggeringly low.

Let’s start with explaining what the LHC is exactly. The LHC is what we call a particle accelerator. In principle this is a very simple device, because if you take two metal plates, take a battery and connect the positive to one plate and the negative to the other, you have constructed a particle accelerator. The way this works is that a particle (proton or electron) is electrically charged, and will feel a pull towards one of the plates. As it is attracted it will accelerate and collide with the plate. This setup is used a lot by physics students to do very simple experiments.

However, after the particle collides, the experiment is over. It would be a lot more interesting if we would be able to accelerate the particle longer so we can get it at much higher speeds. We can increase the voltage over the plates, but the true problem here is that it collides with the plate, is there a way to prevent that? By using magnets, we can just do that. We can use a magnetic field to bend and steer the path of the particle, so instead of colliding with the plate, it will just miss it. The second step is then to have a second accelerator behind the first, and again have a magnet, and so on. The last solution to the puzzle is to build a circle, so the particle is accelerated repeatedly as it travels around the circle, and every time it is gaining speed.

However, there are some limiting factors. The path of the particle needs to be bent by the magnets, but the faster the particle travels, the bigger the magnets need to be. Secondly, the tighter the circle the stronger the magnetic fields need to be as well. So, building a larger circle is very beneficial. With the LHC the circle has a circumference of 27 kilometers ( ~16.9 miles) and is the largest particle accelerator ever build.

The big news is, that the LHC is about to open with new machines, magnets and detectors and can reach speeds and energies that we have never been able to reach before. Higher energy means that we can discover as of yet unknown particles and unravel some of the mysteries of the Big Bang. Some theories even predict that it may be possible to create a black hole, and that is where the problem lies; because we all know that black holes are terrible huge monsters, and so we would all die.

Thankfully, nature does not work that way. The first thing to understand is that there are many 'sizes' of black holes. Actually a black hole does not have a size; we normally use an imaginary size of event horizon, or simply by weight. There are black holes at the center of galaxies that weigh many millions times what our sun weighs. The other class of black holes is in the order of 1.5 to 3 or 4 times our Sun, and there seem to be also black holes that fall in between these two classes, but we do not understand yet how they were formed.

In the case with the LHC none of the above classes would be created, but a black hole much MUCH lighter. Simply because the energy needed to create something bigger is simply not available. For comparison, a nuclear bomb changes matter into energy. In the case of the Hiroshima bomb, about 1 gram of matter was transformed. In this case we want to do the opposite, we have energy and want to create mass, so it would take the energy of a Hiroshima bomb to potentially create a black hole of 1 gram.

Needless to say, the energy available for the LHC is quite less then a nuclear bomb. The resulting black hole would be so incredibly small; it would simply fly through the Earth without even colliding with any atoms. But theoretically it could stay in the Earth in some orbit around the center, and eventually do collide and to grow slowly. However, and this is the part that the media leave out, a black hole of the size we are talking about is simply not stable. It would evaporate and cease to exist.

So, to begin with the chance of actually creating one is very small, and then IF they create one it is so small it cannot do any harm, and it isn't stable anyway so it is gone long before it can do any harm. Yes, we'll live through tomorrow, and we might even learn something about the world we live in.

Rocket Lunch

2008-08-31T19:03:00.012-05:00

As you know, a romantic lunch or dinner depends on a lot of things. Of course there is company, but surroundings count for a lot as well. Look at the Oasis here in Austin; gorgeous views, sunsets, decks & margarita's. It's a fantastic spot and the view is so magnificent good company is optional.

Needless to say, the lunch I had in Leicester, UK at the National Space Center was a quite acceptable spot (click image to see full resolution):

This is the first stage of the "Blue Streak" a British made rocket, and they have this one on display in their museum.

Taken the fact we live in Texas, I think we can do better... don't you agree?

Astronomy Education

2008-08-27T08:57:00.003-05:00

Some changes you have power over (like quitting your job) and others are just thrown in your face...

Last Sunday I talked to the Vice President of our group, Dr Ron Johns, who is the assistant dean of Math and Science at ACC. We have known each other for about five years now and have become friends. Last year we explored the possibility for me to teach astronomy at ACC, but this fell through because I did not have the time available to do this during the day. But taken the fact that I have indeed quit my job so I can start working full time for the planetarium, I do have time now. I had not yet put two and two together, but talking to Ron it all of the sudden it clicked. So, it looks like I will be teaching astronomy at ACC very soon. That should be fun!

Additionally, yesterday I had the pleasure of sitting down with a physics and astronomy teacher from the khabele school here in Austin. We talked in length about the need for a Planetarium and Science museum for Austin and explored ways how we can help each other. Well... looks like I will be showing up in class there as well.

I am looking very much forward getting back to my profession again. Two educational opportunities within a week! Don't they say all good things come in threes? I better get ready for #3 then. :-)

Westminster Abbey

2008-08-22T08:10:00.015-05:00

As you probably know, churches in Europe are amazing for several reasons. Firstly they are magnificent in their splendor, size and atmosphere. They go back many centuries and some even have histories of more then a thousand years. The second amazing part is that besides visiting tourists, they are mostly empty, because the vast majority of Europeans do not go to church.

Another interesting fact that a lot of Americans are not aware off, is the fact that European churches are filled with dead people. Literally. It was a very normal custom to be buried in the floor, or wall, of the church. Walking through a European church means walking over graves of people long dead, but still remembered through the gravestone you are standing on. The richer (or famous) the person, the more elaborate the grave. Some are so old, that the marble grave stone, carefully carved centuries ago, have worn down to a point of illegibility.

In that respect, the more famous the church (or cathedral), the better the chance is to find someone famous buried there. I guess one of the most spectacular places to visit then is Westminster Abbey in London, especially if you are an astronomer. Last Sunday I had the pleasure of doing just that.

First I came by the grave of captain James Cook (1728-1779). Although Cook was primarily an explorer, there are a lot of very interesting, astronomy related, historical facts. On his second voyage for example, he used a chronometer. Back in those days, one of the holy grails of technology was the ability to track your longitude. Latitude is relatively easy by simply using the Sun, horizon and the date as a reference, but longitude requires a very precise clock. For the longest time there was a big fight between the people that believed the answer lied in a precise clock, or in precise star charts or lunar observations. Eventually the clock won and Cook was one of the first explorers to use it and be thoroughly impressed by the accuracy.

Another link to astronomy is that on his first voyage he traveled to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. By observing this from different points on the Earth, this was one of the few potentially precise methods of determining the distance of Venus and the Sun from the Earth, i.e. to calculate the scale of the Solar system. Unfortunately however, Cook's measurements were not precise enough to reach a final conclusion.

The second person of interest interred at Westminster Abbey is laying directly next to Cook: Sir Edmond Halley (1656-1742). Halley is most famous for the comet named after him: Halley's Comet. In those days there were some very strange theories about what comets were and how they traveled through space. Halley was the first one to predict the return of a comet and correctly understanding the nature of comets. Halley correctly theorized that most comets are in elliptical orbits around the Sun and therefore return to the Sun at regular intervals.

But Halley did much more during his life. In the picture above you can see a hint of text in the comet's tail, and they list the accomplishments of Halley during his life. Because the list is interesting and the last one is simply funny, I will give the list here:

First to predict the return of the comet named after him
Second Astronomer Royal
Fellow and secretary of the royal Society
Sponsor of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia
Editor of philosophical transaction
Savilian professor of geometry Oxford
Oceanographer, Meteorologist, Geophysicist
Inventor, navigator and famed for his researches in determining Longitude
He laid the actuarial foundation of life insurance

The last grave I visited, was the grave of Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727). As an astronomer this visit laid especially close to my heart, because Newton truly changed our world with his simple formulas. Just like the other two characters I write about above, Newton is famous for mostly one thing, but did so many more things. For example, if you look at a US quarter (yes I mean the 25 cent coin in your wallet), you see that the side of the coin is ribbed. That was an invention made by Newton, bet you did not know that! The reason for this invention was that previously coins just had smooth sides, and people would cut a thin strip of the coin, making the coin a little smaller, but otherwise exactly the same. By introducing this ribbed pattern, this way of thievery was made impossible.

The picture to the right is of me standing in front of newton's grave. This took quite some effort to do, because taking pictures at the abbey is strictly forbidden. But talking to the head usher, and explaining the planetarium project I received special permission for this image. Guess there are some benefits of being president after all.

Things Changing

2008-08-10T08:17:00.007-05:00

Today I will be flying to the Netherlands, and will be for 10 days in Europe. The trip is mostly family related, but taken the fact that I will be 3 days in Great Britain I am going to make an effort to visit Greenwich Observatory, which also has a planetarium, as well as Leicester.

Leicester is about an hour and a half north by train from London, but it is home of the National Space Center, which is a modern museum, planetarium, and the only Challenger Learning Center in the UK. I met several people from that facility at IPS in Chicago when they were marketing their new planetarium show: they create cool stuff!

So in the midst of all the changes that are going on with the Austin Planetarium, because we're setting up a new office, have a new logo, are getting a full time employee, are reworking our brochures as well as the website, I will be out for 10 days. Lots of change going on!

Talking about change, albeit on a bit larger scale; I found this video on YouTube. I had actually seen it before, also during the Conference in Chicago. It is also about change. What you see is an animated video of two galaxies colliding. The animation is created using Super Computers, calculating how the two galaxies attract each other and interact. The really cool part come in, when they stop the animation, to show a Hubble image of two galaxies that are more or less exactly in that stage of collision. Enjoy, and if I have a chance in Europe I will blog from there!

Well.... getting back might be easier.

2008-08-08T13:19:00.009-05:00

It looks like that all the buzz about the secret news from Mars was rather disappointing. NASA did not discover life, nor an environment which would be friendly to potential life, but quite the opposite. It is not 100% for sure yet that the test results are indicative of all of Mars, but the thing that the Phoenix Lander discovered was perchlorate, and that's nasty stuff.

As you know, we need oxygen to live; without it we simply die. But as a matter of fact, oxygen is a rather dangerous gas. For example, without oxygen nothing would burn, and that would make the world a lot safer. Maybe a better example is that oxygen is actually so strong a chemical that given time and exposure to oxygen, iron (and a lot of other metals) simply rots away. Just by calling the process 'rusting' does not alter the fact that oxygen is potent stuff. We use this potency to live: it gives us energy. When oxygen binds with iron, some energy (heat) is released. This is exactly what is happening in our blood and lungs. All quite ingenious I must say.

So, if you want to produce a lot of heat, you can oxidize a lot of things quickly, and for that you need a lot of oxygen. Our air contains about 20% oxygen, but we can use other chemicals that contain a lot of oxygen atoms for this purpose as well. The bond between hydrogen and oxygen is very strong, so that is not good to use to feed a fire. Well that makes sense, because that's water. But there are other chemicals that are bonded very "loosely" and the oxygen comes free easily. one of those chemicals is indeed Perchlorate: one chloride atom, and no less then four oxygen atoms. To indicate the potency of this stuff: it is used as rocket fuel! That's the stuff NASA uses in their solid rocket boosters to send the Space Shuttle to space! Plenty of energy indeed.

That this stuff is in the Martian soil is not directly good news. First of all it is poisonous to humans and other mammals, but given the fact that it reacts so easily with other chemicals all sorts of other nasty things would happen to the poor plant that is trying to grow in that type of soil.

But it's not all bad news. The very fact that the chemical is so reactive and has a lot of energy means that it is entirely possible that there are microbes feeding off of it. Another question is, that if the stuff is so reactive, why hasn't it reacted yet? Can this be actively created by some life form on Mars? This is not such a crazy idea, because we have life forms on earth that actually produce oxygen out of thin air (literally), and we call them plants. But indeed, the existence of Perchlorate on the surface of Mars can even be an indicator of life on the Red planet.

It was not a discovery we expected, but it sure is interesting. We still are not 100% sure if the perchlorate actually came from the Lander itself, but taken the fact that the Viking missions found similar results, it looks like Mars has a lot of Perchlorate. Well, if we ever send people to Mars, and they need to build a rocket to come back, things may just have become easier.

Water, Scotch and more

2008-08-02T15:20:00.005-05:00

I hope everyone has heard about the wonderful, albeit not surprising, news that the Phoenix lander has confirmed the existence of water on the Red Planet. By no means do I want to play this down, but for years now we have been receiving indirect evidence of the abundance of water on Mars. The carved out river beds and other water erosion signs, the signature of water in spectroscopic research, and then now finally the direct proof: there is water on Mars, and plenty of it as well.

But to my surprise there are articles on the net, not just downplaying the discovery but outright being negative about it! Why? Well... Martian water is not drinkable. There are probably very high levels of salt and other nasty-ness thingies in there. And oh-how-disappointing-for eehhh who? I am not aware of a Mars mission being planned to check what type of Scotch would be best to bring in the case we visit. What an incredible effort to see the glass way half-empty! Next time you're at the ocean, please have a glass of sea-water and see how that works out. There is just no pleasing some people I guess. (By the way, if you read the linked article, and need to have a simple answer on how to clean such a poisonous concoction, the answer is "distillation". We mastered the technique quite some centuries ago... hence the aforementioned Scotch. But I digress).

But there is more news. The first news is that the Phoenix lander has received the go-ahead for an additional month of operations. The lander was designed and budgeted for 90 days of operation on the Martian surface, and there have now been 30 days tagged on to that. More time = larger chance for other wonderful discoveries.

And this brings me to the other news: there are rumors... Just before the news of water on Mars was announced, the Phoenix team was talking about a "Major Discovery" and they even contacted the White House concerning this discovery. The the announcement of water was a bit like: was that all? Or is the really big announcement still forthcoming? I would not be surprised that we're in for some very interesting data from the Phoenix lander very soon.

Time for some brooding in my comfy chair with a scotch, but hold the water please.

Makemake? Really?!?

2008-07-31T08:45:00.004-05:00

For the past two years or so, there has been quite an upheaval in what we call a planet, a Dwarf Planet, a Plutoid and several other suggestions. I even gave a TV interview on the subject when Pluto lost its status as a planet. Since that interview the term "Dwarf Planet" has been downgraded, and instead we now call them "Plutoids". But if you think the discussion is over, think again.

The first problem was with the definition of a Dwarf Planet:

A dwarf planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), is a celestial body orbiting the Sun that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity but which has not cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals and is not a satellite.

The problem with this definition, well... one of the problems at least, is that Pluto crosses the path of Uranus, so by that definition you can say that Uranus has not cleared it's path and is therefore a Dwarf Planet. It is a rather sloppy definition in other words. But still, the intent of this classification was to have some more order, and now Pluto and Ceres were both considered Dwarf Planets, as well as some funky named objects beyond Pluto.

But help was on the way, and the mighty IAU cleared things up with a new definition and a new name: Plutoids! The definition of which is:

Plutoids are celestial bodies in orbit around the Sun at a semimajor axis greater than that of Neptune that have sufficient mass for their self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that they assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (near-spherical) shape, and that have not cleared the neighbourhood around their orbit. Satellites of plutoids are not plutoids themselves.

The first surprise is that with this definition, Ceres is no Plutoid, but still a dwarf planet. Conversely, because the term Dwarf Planet has not been updated, Pluto is both a Plutoid and a Dwarf planet at the same time! If the IAU has been trying to confuse the heck out of people, then they have succeeded tremendously.

And now we have a new Plutoid... Makemake (pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh). Originally designated as 2005 FY9, and then renamed as (no joke) "Easter Bunny", and then now the catchy name of Makemake. I agree, it is better then Easter Bunny, but I tremble to think what they will come up with next.

Happy Birthday Astronews!

2008-07-30T11:03:00.003-05:00

I just finished writing this month's AstroNews and realized that it was exactly 4 years ago that we started this wonderful page! August 2004 - August 2008

The idea was that although we do not have a planetarium in Austin, we can already start filling the shoes of one. In other words, why wait with starting to educate children and adults about astronomy? I am very happy to say that it has been a huge success, because the AstroNews receives hundreds of hits each month. Some months even well over a thousand visitors!

If you have never visited the page, please take a look at: http://www.austinplanetarium.org/astroNews.php and if you know an educator, or someone you think is interested in Astronomy tell them about this wonderful local source of astronomy.

Double Cheat

2008-07-28T08:07:00.002-05:00

A Solar eclipse is a spectacular event, especially when the eclipse is total. If you ever have the chance to witness something like that you should absolutely make time & travel plans because it is an event you will never forget. It is important however to be in the zone of the total eclipse, 99% eclipsed is not good enough, because that 1% of a sliver of a Sun will ruin the experience (although it is better then nothing)

This August 1st, parts of the world will be able to see a total solar eclipse. You can see the path of totality here. Outside the narrow band the eclipse will be partial. But as you can see, the eclipse starts in far northern Canada, goes over Greenland, Nova Zembla, then into Siberia and it ends in China. Unfortunately, for us here in the US we will not see anything at all. :-(

I won't go into the reason in this blog, but a Solar eclipse is always accompanied by a Lunar eclipse. Lunar eclipses are more common and less spectacular, but anyone who can see the Moon can enjoy the eclipse, you do not need to be at a special place. Well... that is not entirely true: you need to be on the right side of the Earth. Unfortunately, we also will not be able to see anything of that eclipse, because the Moon will be on the other side of the Earth as this spectacle plays out, and by the time the Moon rises for us, the eclipse will be over.

We will have to wait until May 20, 2012 to see an eclipse in the US. But this will be an "annular" eclipse. This means that it happens when the Moon is a bit further away from the earth and is just too small to cover the entire disk of the Sun. So, although fun to see, this is not as spectacular as a total Eclipse. For that we need to wait a little longer: August 21 2017. This will be a spectacular eclipse going from coast to coast. If you want to go ahead and book a hotel in advance, you can see the path here. Hey that's less then 3000 days away! I better start booking my flight. :-)

New Logo, part II

2008-07-22T13:36:00.002-05:00

Last week we were presented with a total of eight logos, created my Rick Purdue of brandfarm.com. I must say that it was a very exciting experience. Of course it is personal in the sense that the "logo" I designed 5 years will have to retire, but also very exciting to see what our new look-and-feel is going to be.

The designs ranged from rather corporate, very spacey to quite abstract, very colorful to only one color. The one thing they all had in common: they were all beautiful, and boy was it difficult to choose objectively!

My solution was simple: I didn't.

Of course I had my favorite, but I wanted to see what other people's reactions were (adults, kids, designers and people who do not know anything about design and everything in between). Quite quickly it became apparent that the majority was leaning to a very nice, rather abstract design. Here and there some exceptions, but it became quite clear what direction we should be taking.

So, the next step will be to see this design in some other colors, different fonts etc, but I think the most difficult step has been taken. Maybe in a week or so I have something in hands that I can post here. I can't wait to have it all ready so we can start designing the paper system, new brochures and a new website!

New Logo

2008-07-14T08:40:00.005-05:00

When I started the planetarium project five years ago, I started with what I knew best, and developed the austinplanetarium.org website. I enjoy web development and like to make pretty looking websites. I was very pleased with the result, and the look and feel of the website has been with us for all of these five years. The most recognizable aspect, which we have been using in all of our flyers and publications, is the image of the earth with the Shuttle above/under it, and the curved black border.

Although recognizable, the problem with the image is that it cannot stand alone; it is not a true logo. I did not realize this until we started to work with NAKA Media, one of our newest corporate supporters. The other 'problem' is that five years is a very long time for a website, so it badly needs new design layout etc.

So... we're going to have a new logo, and I have no idea what it is going to be! We had the incredible luck to find (through NAKA media) a top logo designer: Rick Perdue from brandfarmdesign.com. You probably have never heard from him, but you definitely have seen his work. His most famous design is the colorful windows logo, that little wavy flag. Others include Encarta, Dell, Nissan etc etc.

The first meeting was very exciting and inspiring, but I am especially excited about tomorrow (Tuesday), because he is going to present 4 or 5 designs, ranging from very conservative to 'out-there'. I will be very sorry to see "my baby" disappear, but I am incredibly curious to see what Rick will have cooked up for us.

More about this on Wednesday!

Bolts

2008-07-10T20:31:00.005-05:00

A couple of things that have happened over the last weeks, all of the sudden have come to the forefront. I guess the story starts 2 years ago, when I was at the IPS conference in Melbourne Australia. There, I met Dr Rob Landis from Houston. Young guy, brilliant, fluent in Russian as well as English, and "in charge" of flying the International Space Station (ISS). He was a keynote speaker, and his speech was a definite highlight of my trip.

Fast forward two years.

IPS Chicago and to my great pleasure I met Rob again. Thankfully he recognized me and we had some good talks (hopefully more about that in a later post), but the thing that struck me most was his talking about dealings with "The Russians".

As we all know the Cold War is over and we are all on great terms. Well... guess it ain't that simple. I am honestly not sure what I can and cannot post here, but let's just say that Rob had some jaw dropping stories to tell about his interactions with "The Russians".

After the story he mentioned that they (=The Russians) were planning to bring fireworks into the ISS. They have had big trouble flying their space (Soyuz) craft back to Earth on the last two returns (read: the darn crafts almost burned up on return), and they think there is something wrong with the installed explosive bolts. So, let's take it apart and bring the bolts in for close inspection! Needles to say there is some risk involved, taken the fact that these explosives were never designed to be removed, let alone brought into a space station, where a leak in the hull is absolutely fatal.

Rob stated that when NASA understood what they were planning, the official reply was: "You're gonna do WHAT?" Anyway... it looks like things went ok: CNN.

But taken the fact that Richard Garriott from Austin will have to fly up in one of these crafts, and come back down with it in October... let's just hope Russian Fireworks is as good as ... Chinese I guess. :-)

Fulldome Software: Uniview

2008-07-10T09:16:00.004-05:00

One of the problems we of the Friends of the Austin planetarium are experiencing, is that most people in Austin have no idea what a planetarium is. How can you get someone excited for a project, when they do not truly understand what a planetarium is?

Another problem is that with the advent of full-dome video, the planetarium landscape has changed radically. Truly anything can be displayed or modeled on the dome, and so we see planetarium shows about biology, the deep sea etc etc. The reason is that a full dome environment is a very natural way of displaying the real world, which is all around us as well.

There are several software providers creating stunning systems for use in the planetarium. The three biggest are SkySkan, Evans & Sutherland, and Sciss. The video below is an interview with the founder of Sciss, showing off what there product (called Uniview) can do.

I decided to post the video as-is. The quality is rather poor because the vendor setup was rather dark and we did not put up any lighting whatsoever. We also encounter some problems caused by the slow internet connection at the conference. (You would think a large conference center would have a great internet setup these days.... it's 2008 people!). Anyway, the resulting video is still worthwile to watch, and gives you some ideas of what is possible.

By the way... SkySkan has similar software as I mentioned, but they can do it in 3D! Flying through the universe with stars flying around your ears and galaxies in and around your face is an amazing experience!

Oh, and the video ends rather abruptly... thats what you get for not using fresh batteries.

IPS 2008 Chicago IL

2008-07-08T13:12:00.005-05:00

Every other year the IPS Conference is held. IPS stands for the International Planetarium Society, and IPS conferences are the largest planetarium conference in the world. I had the pleasure to visit the IPS conference 2 years ago in Melbourne, Australia. This year things were a little closer to home: Chicago IL. at the Adler planetarium.

I was under strict instruction to shoot video for the new Austin Planetarium blog :-) , so here is a welcome message from gorgeous Chicago, at the Adler Planetarium:

We recorded several other videos, so tomorrow more!

Welcome to the Austin Planetarium blog!

2008-07-07T08:28:00.000-05:00

Hello and Welcome!

My name is Torvald Hessel, and I am the president of the Friends of the Austin planetarium, which is a 501(c)-3 non profit organization with the goal to build a planetarium in Austin. I started this project a little over 5 years ago, and I am very pleased with all the developments. We are making great progress, and this blog will be the place to keep up with what is happening.

Austin is a great town with a very well educated population that keeps the high-tech industry running. It is therefore very surprising that Austin is the largest city in the United States without a planetarium. As a matter of fact of the 50 largest cities in the US, Austin ranks #16 but is the only city without a planetarium.

Needless to say: this has to change! Thankfully there are many ways how you can help as well.

The easiest is to tell others about our project: send them a link to this blog, or to our website: www.AustinPlanetarium.org.
Subscribe to our newsletter, and ask others to do the same! A sign-up form you can find here: Newsletter
Make a donation. You can find our donation form here. All donations are fully tax deductible.