Planetarium pages

Kerry Magruder, OBU Planetarium Director 1994-1998

• What is a planetarium?
• What is a Liberal Arts planetarium?
  • "Inventing the Liberal Arts Planetarium" (PowerPoint 98, 12 MB; Stuffit compressed)
• Technical specifications
• Planetarium Multi-media guide (Planet Ops syllabus)
• Basic Celestial Phenomena
  • Constellations
  • Primary and Secondary level activities
• Planetarium links
• Planetarium shows presented at OBU
• Cosmology and Cultures project

Planetarium Director OBU Planetarium home page

At OBU I supervised the design and installation of a uniquely designed planetarium and multimedia theater, implemented with an academic mission for undergraduate liberal arts education. Download an introductory but comprehensive two-hour presentation, including printable speaker's notes, which explores how a liberal arts mission may be embodied in a planetarium's academic ends and technical means: "Inventing the Liberal Arts Planetarium" (PowerPoint 98, 12 MB) The planetarium now plays a central role in science courses for liberal arts majors as a setting for instruction in the historical development of astronomy and cosmology. The OBU Planetarium's Cosmology and Cultures project History of Science and the Liberal Arts Curriculum

Responsibilities as Director included: GNSC 250 Planetarium Operations Labs for US 311 Natural Sciences Supervising 10-12 planetarium student workers. all aspects of maintenance and technical operation Technical specifications include guides for student training in various multimedia technologies. program production and show presentation for: university classes university guests, including visiting alumni and prospective students school groups (Thursdays and Fridays) weekly public shows (Friday nights)

A planetarium is a room with a dome-shaped ceiling. At the center of the room is a star projector, which projects points of light representing the stars and planets onto the dome to simulate the night sky for any time of night, any day of the year.

Many people confuse planetariums and observatories: the latter are dome-shaped houses that contain telescopes for observing the skies. Many planetariums do have telescopes and sponsor star-gazing parties, but the essential feature of a planetarium is the star projector, not the telescope.

Click the planetarium drawing (left) to go to the Loch Ness world-wide directory of planetariums.

The OBU Planetarium logo (right) is NOT based on a medieval woodcut

©1997 Written by Kerry Magruder

Basic Celestial Phenomena	Constellations	Not a Medieval Woodcut	Planetarium pages
EarthVisions.net	Geology	History of Science