At EMU's new planetarium, the sky is the limit

Wednesday, January 12, 2011 | Source: Concentrate

It's Cassiopeia on the ceiling and Aries overhead as Eastern Michigan University astronomy students take seats under the stars in the university's new planetarium.

The planetarium classroom, opened last week, is part of the $90 million Mark Jefferson Science Complex -- the largest single construction project in EMU's history, according to the university. The capital project includes renovation of the 180,000-square-foot Mark Jefferson building, together with an 80,000-square-foot, five-story, LEED Silver-certified addition that will house the psychology, biology, chemistry, geography and geology, and physics and astronomy departments. That addition is topped by the planetarium, viewable from a ground-floor atrium.

The planetarium is 30 feet in diameter with a 25-foot high dome, and seating for 37, says Dr. Jim Carroll, head of the physics and astronomy department at EMU. The facility will serve as an astronomy classroom Monday through Thursday, be open to K-12 students on Fridays, and offer shows for the community on weekends. Carroll expects the planetarium portion will be up and running by February after installation of the projector and the purchase of some shows.

The space's most unique feature is its spherical shape, Carroll says. The seats are arranged in arcs all pointing towards the front of the room; in a typical planetarium, seats are arranged in concentric circles. The department raised over $60,000 from alumni and friends to fund a full digital projector, which will enable complete rotation of sky views. "Whereas in a traditional planetarium, the orientation of the sky is fixed based on how the projector was oriented," he explains.

As EMU is a teaching center, one major purpose for the facility is to educate the next generation of science instructors.

"...It turns out there are a lot of schools in the area that have empty planetariums but nobody knows how to use them," Carroll observes. "We thought this will be a great opportunity for us to take future science teachers and train them to use a facility like this one so that if they go out into their high school and there's [a planetarium], it doesn't have to sit mothballed. They can jump right into it and start using it."

No word yet as to whether there will be Pink Floyd laser rock shows.

Source: Dr. Jim Carroll, head of the physics and astronomy department at EMU
Writer: Tanya Muzumdar