I know, it's just venting at this point; last post for the day I promise.

[catsittingstill]

The planetarium was one of my favorite field trips as a kid.  It was like magic to see the sky inside, to see time speeded up or run backwards so we could watch the long term movements of the planets and stars, see what Kepler and Copernicus saw.  That giant robotic death-insect in the middle was the projector, and it didn't look like something you could pick up cheap.  But it introduced me and tens of thousands of other kids a year to astronomy and space science.

McCain can stop harshing on the planetarium just anytime. 

Comments

[allisona.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. First time I heard that I found myself thinking I really didn't mind that that money had been spent on something that would scientifically enhance a city. We're still mourning the shutting down of our planetarium here in Toronto several years back. I still miss it myself and I miss taking classes there.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry that Toronto's planetarium shut down. My sympathies.

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there' a big difference between the implied "overhead projector" of McCain's speeches, and the complicated star projectors, computer controlled that match the science standards and goals set out by our current president that cost beaucoups bucks.

I suppose we're supposed to get outraged at the implied waste, and remember it was McCain twenty years ago that spotted the fraud in the Navy budget for things like thousand dollar toliet seats for ship builders, and think he's saving us money again now.

Okay, maybe it *is* an earmark. But it's one that helps get many people of all ages enchanted with space, and start helping build more scientists to achieve our goal of getting to Mars. (I, too was starry-eyed at seeing the planetarium shows on field trips.)

[patoadam]

The national bone marrow registry was an earmark, too. I don't know how many lives it has saved. I am registered as a potential donor.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that. I was registered once, but I have moved many times since then. Maybe I ought to try to get back in touch with them.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Earmarks for science! Let's harness the power of earmarks for positive ends!

[patoadam]

http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/pressroom/pr/2008_10_08_AdlerStatement_aboutdebate.pdf

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I am glad to see that the planetarium replied to this, and I appreciate the link.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

The first show I saw at the Hans Baldauf planetarium at the museum that was once upstairs from the Kalamazoo Public Library was probably the closest thing to a religious experience I've had in my life. Now, of course, I know that nothing beats the real sky, the spine-tingling glow of the Aurora, the comfort I have learned to take from the familiar stars of orion, catching that instant of clarity between the swirling currents that blur Jupiter's magnificent clouds, the fuzzy patches of the Andromeda galaxy, and the clums of star clusters and nebulae in our own galaxy. But it all started when the demonstrator turned down the lights to reveal the calming magic of the stars on the dome.

The museum has moved to its own building now. And while they have a planetarium at the new site, it's not the same. I really miss the huge, six-foot globe of the moon's near side, covered by hundreds of faithfully sculpted craters by the entrance--that's just gone. The Addler Planetarium in Chicago in particular is a National treasure, the midwest's premier site for astronomical education, and a field trip destination for schools as far as Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The planetarium projector itself is a wonder of technology--the first attempt at a planetarium was an iron shell large enough to hold the audience, with holes punched in it to represent stars.

In the middle of the 20th century, a planetarium projector would consist of a star ball, with precisely drilled holes for each star, and an arc lamp point light source in the center. The brightest stars required holes so big that their projected stars would be big blobs, so each of the brighter stars was given its own individual lens projector. Other projectors put the faint haze of the milky way on the dome. The finest Zeiss projectors came with two star balls, so that bothe hemispheres of the sky could be seen in their entirety. The less expensive Spitz projectors had a single star ball, sacrificing the south circumpolar stars for economy. These became popular in 1957, when Sputnik set off a science education panic in the country. Odd how our nation's Republican leaders could turn a phobic panic over a foreign threat into a reach for the stars in 1957. The cheapest of the Spitz projectors saved money by replacing the lovingly machined spherical star ball with a sheet-metal dodecahedron. One major planetarium tried a do-it-yourself design--a collection of slide projectors, essentially. Each slide was a glass plate, but not a photograph. Instead, technicans carefully laid a correctly-sized grain of grit on the plate. The plate was then loaded into a vacuum chamber, and aluminum was vapor-deposited on the plate. The grit was cleaned off, and a pristine image of a section of the sky emerged to by loaded into the projector.

The planets were projected by their own little point projectors, each pointed by a system of gears that mimicked the cycles and epicycles of the Ptolemaic system of the universe. As a young adult, I had the privilege of operationg the Spitz projector at the Hans Baldauf planetarium, and learned to set the heliocentric coordinates of the earth and the other planets into those gears, not only to point the planets in the correct position for the night, but to simulate their motions, prograde and retrograde, over the coming years.

Since the 1980's, there has been a movement to replace the old optical-mechanical planetarium with digital projection technology. The Digistar system was introduced in the 80's, but for all that it could simulate travel to anywhere in the universe, it was dim and blurry. Of course, digital projector technology has improved considreably in the past quarter century. But the planetarium has a huge screen to cover--a dome that may enclose hundreds of people--and resolution requirements--stars that are both point-like and bright, that make it a special challenge even for today's technology.

I know that the University of Michigan installed a new planetarium for educational use just a couple of years ago. And they pretty much decided that the old-fashioned optical-mechanical projector was still the best way to go.

"overhead projector"

yeah, just go down to Office Depot and pick one up.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

This is beautiful and informative, and moving. You know, maybe you should copy it into your LJ so the rest of your readers can see it. Thank you for posting it here.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

There's some snide, cynical observation to be made here, about the well-known hostility of neocons to science (and learning in general).

Consider it made.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Done :-)

[howeird]

Yeah, he blew it on that one. He was trying to point out that Obama earmarked a lot of $$ to Chicago, well out of proportion to what the project should actually cost. To me, $3 million sounds like about triple what a planetarium projector should cost. But it sure beats spending it on a war.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Actually I don't know that $3 million was the right figure for the earmark. I do seem to recall that the earmark was actually about 1/3 of the projector's cost; the rest was going to be raised through state funds and private donations to the planetarium.

And yes, it was way expensive. But then, planetarium projectors are in limited demand, so there probably isn't much in the way of economies of scale to bring down the price of the delicate precision optics required.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

It also wouldn't surprise me if they were going to do a major rehab of the star theater to go with the new projector. If the seating is as old as the projector, it probably needs to be replaced as well, for example. If you have to shut down the thing for a couple of weeks, it seems like the time to replace other stuff.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

That would certainly make good sense.

[lola-mccrary.livejournal.com]

It makes me wonder if McCain has ever SEEN a planetarium show. Griffith Park in L.A. was my first, and planetariums shows are still one of my favorite things to do. Even if three mill was too much for the projector, hopefully they used the money for other things they needed--like letting kids in for free.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the earmark was about 1/3 of the cost of the projector and that the rest was going to be raised by state funds and private donations. I don't remember if $3 million was the size of the earmark, or the total cost, or what.

Either McCain has never been to the planetarium, or he imagines most of his audience hasn't, I suppose.

[branna.livejournal.com]

More to the point, according to Adler's statement, the earmark request wasn't even funded:

http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/pressroom/pr/2008_10_08_AdlerStatement_aboutdebate.pdf

[branna.livejournal.com]

I ran across one of your comments in almeda's journal and followed it yours, and saw this post. As someone who works on an experiment for which Adler Planetarium is one of the collaborators: Thank you!

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) You're welcome. Thanks for visiting.