Thursday, June 26, 2008

July eNewsletter from the MN Planetarium Society

VISIT THE EXPLORADOME AT THE WORKS TECHNOLOGY MUSEUM JULY 17-19

The Exploradome will be at The Works Technology Discovery Center in Edina July 17 - 19.  Shows will run approximately every half hour starting at 10:30 a.m. with the last show beginning at 3:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday and at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday. ExploraDome shows are included at no extra cost to the $5 price of admission to The Works.

The Works is a “hands-on, minds-on” museum where learning about science and engineering is interesting and understandable and fun.   At The Works you can play a harp with a string of laser lights, design and build giant structures, explore how cartoons are made, make a race car and more!  The Works is located on the third floor of the Edina Community Center, near Highway 100 and 50th Street in Edina.  Don’t miss this fantastic opportunity to combine space exploration with hands-on fun for the whole family.  www.theworks.org

In this issue from the Minnesota Planetarium Society:

President's Update
July Night Skies
NASA Turns 50
Seeing in Space
ExploraDome Sponsorship Program
Schedule the ExploraDome

President's Update

Much to be proud of has happened in recent months. Our outreach program, the ExploraDome, reached over 15,000 students in 85 K-12 schools. We have served over 33,000 visitors since October 2006. Our staff led international programming efforts with dome casts to Africa, Chicago, and elsewhere. We raised over $170,000 in fiscal 2008 to serve the outreach program, doubling last year’s results. Paul Douglas and Frank Parisi joined our Board. We are building a statewide network of planetarium users with Como, Rochester, and Mankato on board and several more planetariums joining soon. The City of Minneapolis has remained committed and active in building a new downtown planetarium. The Star Tribune recently ran an editorial supporting the planetarium. And most importantly, Hennepin County has appointed a work group co-chaired by Commissioners Gail Dorfman and Mark Stenglein to address basic questions of location, partners, bonding extension, and operating costs with a recomme ndation due on August 15. Thank you for your support and stay tuned!

Peggy Leppik, President, MNPS

July Night Sky Highlights

To celebrate NASA’s 50th birthday, look at some of their beautiful planetary images:
Mars www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/
Jupiter solarsystem.nasa.gov/galileo
Saturn saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

In our skies, Mars and Saturn appear low in the west at about 10 p.m. Jupiter is up all night long but look in the SSE at about 11 p.m. See the list below for some pretty conjunctions.

For sky maps, go to www.skymaps.com or www.heavens-above.com
Try a star party at Onan Observatory www.mnastro.org/onan

NASA's 50th Anniversary

Happy Birthday NASA. What’s next after 50?
Fifty years of space exploration by NASA represents only our first baby steps into the cosmos.  On June 11, the GLAST (Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope) spacecraft was successfully launched. Gamma rays, invisible to our eyes, enable us to study very high energy emission and bursts from objects such as supernovae, pulsars and black hole systems.  Later this year, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will head to the Moon to create extremely detailed maps of the surface in preparation for the return of humans in 2020.  The Solar Dynamics Observatory to the Sun will study the enormous releases of energy during solar storms, many of which affect satellites, power grids and radio reception.  Many other NASA satellites are planned in future years, including the Herschel Space Observatory to study the earliest stars and galaxies, and Kepler and Space Interferometry Missions to detect Earth-like planets around other stars.  Stay tuned!

www.nasa.gov/missions/

Space-Based Astronomy

Why do NASA and other international space agencies launch telescopes into space?  So they can see better!  Astronomical "seeing" refers to the conditions of the atmosphere while observing from Earth. Compare it to looking through the water from the bottom of a swimming pool.  If the water is nice and still, you can see through it with clarity.  When someone jumps into the pool, the water starts to ripple and it looks like objects outside are waivering around!  Turblance in the atmosphere has the same effect.  Good "seeing" from Earth can be found on mountaintops, above some of those turbulant layers of the atmosphere.  Putting telescopes in space gets rid of the problem altogether. "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" does not apply in space! 

ExploraDome Sponsorship Program, a big first chapter in the Minnesota Planetarium Society’s young history

The Minnesota Planetarium Society has completed a highly successful first full school year for its ExploraDome Immersive Learning Program. So far in 2008 it has garnered 21 sponsors (a donor giving $2,000 or more for a day’s visit).  This compares with 10 sponsors in 2007.  The 21 sponsors in 2008 have contributed $192,692, up from $95,500 donated by sponsors in 2007—a 102% increase! And there are 2 months to go before the Society’s fiscal year ends. 

Who are these sponsors (26 all together in 2007 and 2008) ?  They are 18 corporations, 5 family foundations and 3 individual families that through their generosity have served more than 33,000 visitors—students, small children, and adults who have been inspired, informed and awed by the ExploraDome.  Through their sponsorship 133 days of ExploraDome instruction have been underwritten.

Besides these sponsors, in its fiscal year 2008 to date, MnPS has raised $41,000  from schools and other institutions that paid for an ExploraDome visit themselves. In 2007 the Society raised $3,000 in such fees.

Since learning in 2005 that the State of Minnesota would authorize $22 million in bonding authority to build the new Minnesota Planetarium and Space Discovery Center, the Minnesota Planetarium Society has raised $1.6 plus million to build its own infrastructure and programs in anticipation of a vigorous capital campaign it hopes to launch before the end of 2008.  Of the $1.6 million raised to date, $500,000 is a pledge for this facility. The Society is presently participating in a Hennepin County task force that is expected to determine by the end of August whether the County will finalize an agreement with the Minnesota Planetarium Society so that this campaign can be launched in earnest and a date can be set for opening this much needed new educational resource for our state and our five state region.

Schedule an ExploraDome experience for this September or October and save 20%!
For more information:  http://www.mplanetarium.org/exploradomereservations.htm
To schedule, call or email: 651-999-7300  exploradome@mplanetarium.org