Not so long ago, in a planetarium not so far, far away…
The planetarium, a 20-foot wide metal dome in a room in Herty Hall, has been in the works for around 10 years, said Dr. Donovan Domingue, associate professor of physics and astronomy.
“They set the room aside for that purpose, and when I was hired seven years ago, I was told that part of my responsibility would be to help turn that into something,” Domingue said.
Domingue added that the technology powering the planetarium had become cheaper in seven years, allowing for the purchase of more sophisticated technology than would have originally been possible.
Funds for the planetarium came from the Chemistry and Physics Department, the E.J. Grassmann Trust and the student technology fees. The planetarium may be accessed through the Natural History Museum in the back of Herty Hall.
Many other schools can’t afford to have such equipment on their campus.
“There are places a lot bigger than GCSU that don’t have a planetarium,” said Dr. Agnes Kim, assistant professor of physics and astronomy. “For instance, I went to the University of Texas at Austin, and you’d think they’d have everything. They don’t have a planetarium. So this is something that we are very fortunate to have.”
The planetarium consists of a Digitarium projector and a computer loaded with software called Stellarium. According to Kim, Stellarium is free software that anyone could have on their personal computer. It has a number of features and abilities that make it useful, including a feature that allows users to create guided tours.
“Rather than having to select every object that I want to show, I just press play and I can talk while the program is running,” said Kim.
One of the advantages of the planetarium, according to both professors, is the visual assistance it will provide in classroom lectures.
“It’s an effective tool for astronomy labs and students. I think they can gain a better grasp of the subject in the lab than without it, because the planetarium provides a nice simulation of the sky. We have something similar on a computer, but having it on a screen where you only see a piece of the sky at a time, it’s not at all the same,” Domingue said. “It makes explaining the sky and the motions of the Earth and the planets, and it makes them much easier to do it inside of a dome.”
Some of the other features that Dr. Kim thinks will be helpful include the ability to see the positions of stars during the day, the ability to speed up the progression of time and the ability to see what the sky looks like at different places in the world.
“We have to convince students that stars are still in the sky while the sun is, that the stars move in the course of a night, and we can do that with this (software).”
Domingue hopes that the planetarium will be something that any GCSU student might want to use, regardless of major.
“Students are welcome to volunteer to run the shows, they just have to see me if they want to do that. If they like astronomy, even if they don’t want to be astronomers, it’s still a great teaching opportunity,” said Domingue.
“You don’t need to be in our Physics program, or Chemistry or science majors,” Kim said. “It can be any person who has an interest in astronomy, who wants to research the night sky and talk about what constellations are up or one of your favorite objects.”
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Apr 10 2009. Filed under News.
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