A Visit to Santa Fe College's Planetarium

Yesterday evening Melissa and I visited Gainesville's Santa Fe College and their planetarium, officially named Kika Silva Pla Planetarium after a late benefactor.  The show, taking place 44 years after the first manned landing on the Moon, was titled "Florida Skies: Around the Moon".  James Albury, himself a co-host on the PBS show Star Gazer (the continuation of the late Jack Horkheimer's show Star Hustler), hosted the event.  It featured live "space" music composed and played by established musician John Serrie in the background as storytellers related old folk tales from various parts of the world relating to the night sky.

Despite the date and the title, the show itself didn't delve into the Apollo landing...or even our space program in general, for that matter.  It was more a primer on nighttime naked eye star gazing, explaining rudiments like altitude, azimuth, the meridian, the zenith, and where the planets are currently standing against the backdrop of the constellations.  If you get up just before sunrise (and it's not cloudy) and look toward the eastern horizon you'll see Jupiter and Mars in "conjunction" (appearing very close to each other).  Also, our next lunar eclipse with be in April, 2014.  For  Gainesville, the next solar eclipse will occur sometime in 2017; if you travel up to Nashville, Tennessee, it will be total.

I haven't been to a planetarium in decades, and this was my first visit to the one at Santa Fe College.  The star projection technology has vastly improved over my last planetarium experience, with it actually resembling a real night sky! Kudos.  Albury was a great host, the storytellers did their presentations well, and Serrie was perfect with his meditative, dreamy music.  The show was for one hour and cost me $5.  Pretty good deal, I think!

Before this past March I was always at work during the weekly Santa Fe Planetariums shows.  Now, though, I may be taking more of them in...