I've been a number of times in the past to the Kika Silva Pla Planetarium at Santa Fe College in northwestern Gainesville, but it had been a while since my last visit. I asked my son Will if he'd like to go, too, and we saw their Saturday afternoon show featuring a tour from planet to planet in our Solar System...appropriately to the different movements of Gustav Holst's symphonic work The Planets. Planetarium director James Albury was still there hosting the event with his good humor and enthusiasm...you might know him as a cohost on the weekly five-minute PBS series Star Gazers...originally titled Star Hustler (I imagine that P.C. dictated the change). It was Albury himself who created this presentation, originally as a fundraiser for some students at Buchholz, a local high school. I was impressed with the graphics and information given, but I wondered whether others in the audience were understanding it all or receiving the entertainment value for which they came. After all, we're not talking about adrenaline-pumping high action and suspense on the level of Star Wars. And maybe the rather dimmed colorization of the planets didn't exactly help, either. Still, I liked the program and learned a few things...
Starting from Mercury and going outward from the Sun, skipping over Earth, and ending at Neptune, the presentation provided various interesting facts about the planets and some of their moons as well. As for the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune (the latter two also referred to as "ice giants"), the orbits of their chief moons were shown as lit-up curves, creating striking visual effects. I also noticed that all of the moons of Uranus were named after characters from English literature, apparently a tribute to William Herschel, the English astronomer who discovered the seventh planet. And with each planet, there was a short description of its own named movement from Holst's masterpiece: Mars is perhaps the most famous, but my favorite by far is that of Neptune...
This planetarium has other shows as well, but it's taking a week or two off between school terms before resuming. Besides The Planets, yesterday's lineup included an imaginary thrill ride journey through the solar system (which I've seen before but has since been enhanced), Child of the Universe (a traditional favorite created by Jack Horkheimer in 1972), and a light show presentation accompanied by the music of Led Zeppelin. Yes, I said Led Zeppelin, believe it or not...
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