Blogs - The Planetarium Network

"The wolf moon"

Most ancient cultures named the full moon in each month. No particular reason, though some of the names make sense based on the season. January – Wolf moon, Hunger moon, Old moon February – Snow moon, Ice moon March – Worm moon, Sap moon, Sugaring moon, Crow moon, Storm moon April – Pink moon, Egg moon, Grass moon, Rain moon, Growing moon May – Flower moon, Planting moon, Milk moon, Hare moon June – Strawberry moon, Rose moon, Honey moon, Mead moon July – Buck moon, Thunder moon, Deer moon, Hay… Continue

Added by Zeeshaan Ali Dinally on January 31, 2010 at 5:40am — No Comments

Write Nancy Pelosi and tell her manned space flight is important!!

I just saw this disturbing article in Florida Today about how our Speaker of the House said she is not a big fan of manned spaceflight. This woman is so full of herself that she can't see that much of the technolgy she uses on a daily basis is a direct result of the manned space progam. We need to let her and other members of congress know that manned spaceflight is important to us. I don't care what kind of label you put on her, she is a career politician that has repeatedly shown that power is… Continue

Added by Troy McClellan on December 20, 2009 at 8:18pm — No Comments

It's a boy!

Hi all, I am back to work this week after a 3 month maternity leave. Leopold Max Brummel was born on Sept. 2. Yes, we call him Leo. No, the name was not influenced by the constellation. No, Leo is not a Leo astrologically. Yes, the Sun is "in" Leo on Sept. 2 so Leo is a Leo in that sense!

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Added by Sally Brummel on December 3, 2009 at 4:16pm — No Comments

Warped Media Demo

For those of you who may be interested, ASH Enterprises will be demonstrating its Warped Media full dome video projector next Monday morning in Birmingham AL and on Tuesday morning in Ruston, LA. Anyone interested in attending either of these demos please drop an email to ASHMichigan@comcast.net for specific time and location details. Continue

Added by Mark E. Perkins on November 5, 2009 at 4:31am — No Comments

October Highlights 2009

October 4 - Full Moon September 22 - Close Conjunction of Mercury and Saturn - Early in the morning over North America, the planets Mercury and Saturn will appear in the sky only 0.3 degrees apart. October 13 Close Conjunction of Venus and Saturn. The two planets, Venus and Saturn, will appear only a half-degree apart in the early morning sky. October 18 New Moon October 21, 22 Orionids Meteor Shower. The Orionids is an average shower producing about 20 met… Continue

Added by Zeeshaan Ali Dinally on October 1, 2009 at 12:00am — No Comments

Bad news first, then the good

The Jr Engineering Program at Utah State University lost it's department sponsor. As a result, I have no idea right now if I'll be able to continue using the StarLab at local schools in the coming school year. I do plan to be at the American West Heritage Center's Giant Star Party on 14 Aug. I saw Neptune when it was in conjunction with Jupiter. I have a Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/cachestarhouse Continue

Added by Laura Swift on July 22, 2009 at 2:16pm — No Comments

Galileo at the Maryland Science Center

Last week Galileo was in Baltimore for the opening of "Two Small Pieces of Glass" at the Davis Planetarium. The evening started out with Westminster Astronomical Society setting up some of their telescopes on the courtyard at the Maryland Science Center. If you haven't been to the MdSC, it sits right on the Baltimore inner harbor. Along with the Charles Hayden Planetarium and Museum of Science in Boston, this is one of the great views from a science center. The weather was beautiful, so the ques… Continue

Added by Mike Francis on July 17, 2009 at 4:52pm — No Comments

Where's Galileo

I intended to keep a running monologue of Galileo's travels this International Year of Astronomy and obviously I have fallen behind. Since visiting the Space Telescope Institute, Galileo has gone to the Buhl Planetarium at the Carnegie Science Center, the Franklin Institute for the opening of "Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astonomy" and again for the Galileo symposium weekend, Six Flags America for Physics Day, the Casper Planetarium (while he was visiting schools in Casper, WY), The Virgi… Continue

Added by Mike Francis on June 27, 2009 at 7:57am — No Comments

All systems go!

I recently returned from my first large scale planetarium conference, the SEPA conference in Nahsville (which by the way was a complete BLAST). One thing struck me as interesting. When meeting new people the line of the conversation usually runs along the lines of introductions, where each person is from and then the.."what size is your dome?" and "what system are you running". I am hoping that now that I know more of these great people and have started some collaborations projects with them (o… Continue

Added by Rod_Kennedy on June 26, 2009 at 1:38pm — No Comments

David Dunlap Observatory Saved

Toronto RASC To Hold Public Viewings With 74-inch Telescope at David Dunlap Observatory
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 10:34
The big telescope at the David Dunlap Observatory is back in business. Under an agreement with the owners of the property, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Toronto Centre, now operates the 74-inch reflecting telescope and will begin providing public education and outreach programs. The first public viewing nights at the observatory will be held on July 18

… Continue

Added by Eric Briggs on June 19, 2009 at 12:00pm — No Comments

Success from Ogden

I am waiting to have the premiere of my Blender rough show "The Soccer Game" made into a movie then I will get to watch it on Ott Planetarium's Mediaglobe. Technology can be so much fun! Continue

Added by Jack L. Northrup on June 5, 2009 at 8:38am — No Comments

A Request for help from Romania

I'm not the person she should be asking - can anyone out there help her? Thanks! Sharon from Planetariu Bacau to sharon.shanks@gmail.com date Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 7:08 AM subject astronomy exhibition mailed-by yahoo.com signed-by yahoo.com hide details Apr 16 Reply Follow up message Hello, We are from a small Planetarium from Bacau, Romania. Our Planetarium is placed in a former water tower, and its exhibition space extends over three levels. We want to upgrade the permanent exhibition a… Continue

Added by Sharon Shanks on May 7, 2009 at 10:58pm — No Comments

Planetarium Lighting

Does anyone have a creative and relatively cheap solution for lighting under the dome so we can use the space for class work? We'd like to have enough light for reading, doing lab experiments, activities, etc...about 40 foot candles. We have looked into the RGBW systems but have heard that they don't really provide enough light for traditional class work. True? Besides, we aren't installing the traditional cove lighting system for quite sometime but will need to use the room for class work as so… Continue

Added by Jason Archer on April 23, 2009 at 3:33pm — No Comments

Looking for good deal on Spitz A3P (or perhaps 512 or later)

Greetings. I am leading a community effort to establish a planetarium in my rather small community (60k) that is home to the University of Iowa. There is interest in a facility and I am someone willing to do some work toward an interim planetarium as a demo facility. I would make the dome myself and have engineering and machining experience to assist in maintainance / improvement of equipment. I would like to ask all within "earshot" to perhaps help me locate a source of a working Spitz A3P pro… Continue

Added by Charles Miller on April 21, 2009 at 6:22pm — No Comments

Created a Twitter page for the planetarium.

You can find my tweats at www.twitter.com/cookplanetarium. Continue

Added by Bruce Brazell on March 28, 2009 at 3:30pm — No Comments

one step at a time for show conversion

As we learn more about the full dome environment in general and how Blender applies to it in particular, we are finding new ways to convert old slide based shows to full dome productions. And it got me thinking about concerns other planetarians have had about making the leap to full dome, specifically "how hard is it to convert shows?" The answer to that is probably lame but it is true, "how hard do you want it to be? I guess the real measure of how hard show conversion is, is how you lo… Continue

Added by Rod_Kennedy on March 17, 2009 at 1:24pm — No Comments

A cross post from my other blog...

I have had some great responses from the students and parents about our Great Observatories image of M101. One of the students made a comment about the combined image saying "That must be what it looks like to have Superman's vision." Continue

Added by Jack L. Northrup on March 8, 2009 at 9:23pm — No Comments

Fun differences between the screen and the dome

I just got done putting together an information piece on Comet Lulin. The problem we had was that people were expecting to see the cartoon comet image, not reality. Well I had this so that it looked great on the screen and was correctly warped. Run the presentation on the dome and all the images are vertically compressed about 20%. So back to the computer to get it right. Two more trips back and forth and finally it looked good. Then I showed it to my hostess and she said, "Jack, you spelled it… Continue

Added by Jack L. Northrup on February 27, 2009 at 9:07pm — No Comments

Gravitation: Zero. Flights to Ecstasy.

Delight of Dizziness… giving a spectator that very new feeling - a state of weightlessness Continue

Added by Daniel A. Freedman on February 20, 2009 at 3:17pm — No Comments

gotta love those software designers!

Don't you just love it when software designers re-tool a program and move features around within them, but don't tell anyone where the are going? So now all your tutorials, hot-key references and shortcuts are obsolete. I found this exact thing in the new version of Blender. Blender v 2.48a separated physics and particles into two separate areas and buttons that were once used to do things are GONE. For example, looking for a tutorial to give a character hair. In all the old tutorials you are s… Continue

Added by Rod_Kennedy on February 18, 2009 at 5:40pm — 5 Comments

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