Summer 2016, No. 2

CONSTELLATION Middle Atlantic Planetarium Society www.mapsplanetarium.org

This year’s conference at the James E. Richmond Science Center in Waldorf, MD, will be an enriching experience with several talks, posters and almost a dozen workshops! Talks and posters include “Preview of Evening Planets, August 2016 through September 2017” by Robert Victor and “Introducing the Next Generation Science Standards in your Planetarium: 3-Dimensional Learning Should be Easy in Space” by Patrick McQuillan. Maurice Henderson will also be presenting “Seeing Our World Only as NASA Can!” using our host’s Science on a Sphere. Workshop topics cover a variety of areas including “You’re Not Ready for This Eclipse . . . Are You?” by Ken Miller, “Mediation in the Dome” by Amie Gallagher, “SOFIA: NASA’s Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors” by April Whitt, “Flip Your Dome!” by Susan Button, “Let’s Play: Interactive Gaming in the Planetarium” by Talia Sepersky, “EcoDetectives: Engineering Design Process in the Planetarium” by Patty Seaton, and much more! We are excited to have Dr. Nicky Fox, project scientist for the Solar Probe Plus mission, as a lunch time speaker, and Steven Russo, Director of the East Kentucky Science Center and Planetarium, to give this year’s Margaret No-ble Address. On the technology side, we have a great array of vendors who will be demonstrating advances in planetarium sys-tems and software as well as available full dome programs. In addition to vendor presentations and dedicated times to visit with vendors, there will be full-length screenings of four full dome programs. There will be a lot to see, learn, and do at this year’s conference! Registration is available online at www.mapsplanetarium.org or by mailing in the forms that can be found there. Please email MAPS president-elect Kevin Williams at planetarium@buffalostate.edu if you have any questions. See you in Waldorf! Kevin Williams MAPS Program Committee Chair

MAPS 2016 - Innovate, Imagine, Inspire: Taking a New Approach

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President’s Message CONTACT! MAPS Executive Committee

Officers (2015-2017)

President Jerry Vinski Morehead Planetarium Chapel Hill, NC jvinski@raritanval.edu 908-938-6825 President Elect Kevin Williams Whitworth Ferguson Planetarium SUNY Buffalo State, Buffalo, NY williakk@buffalostate.edu 716-878-5116 Past President Alan Davenport Retired Glenburn, ME AlanDavenport51@gmail.com Secretary Stephen Dubois Ferguson Planetarium Williamsville, NY perchbuoy@yahoo.com 716-542-5483 x243 Treasurer Keith Johnson Edelman Planetarium Glassboro, NJ johnsonk@rowan.edu 856-256-4389

Board Members (2014-2016)

Lee Ann Hennig Thomas Jefferson High School Alexandria, VA lahennig@verizon.net 703-597-9228 Paul J. Krupinski Mr. K.'s Mobile Dome Planetarium RMSC's Strasenburgh Planetarium Cheektowaga, NY mobiledome1993@earthlink.net 716-908-1341 Megan Norris Suits-Bueche Planetarium Schenectady, NY megan.norris@misci.org 518-275-8599

By the time you read this Constellation we should be close to traveling to Waldorf Maryland. As you know, Monique Wilson and her staff at the James E. Rich-mond Science Center will be our hosts and you are all invited to attend July 27-30, 2016. They have a Digistar projection system, Science on a Sphere, computer labs, a great space for portables and much more. The agenda has plenty of time to learn new teaching techniques, see the latest shows and talk to colleagues. The Friday evening banquet will feature Steve Russo presenting the Margaret Noble Address: “How I Got Here, From There, With A Little Help From My (Planetarium) Friends!” With 40 years in the planetari-um field Steve has much to offer. He is also a huge baseball fan. Since the Southern MD Blue Crabs base-ball team is nearby we may have to go there for a side trip. Elsewhere in this issue, Alan Davenport talks about the fall 2017 Pleiades Conference in St Louis (see page 15). I hope everyone reads it and starts to make plans to attend. It will be a wonderful experience with an ex-pected 400+ attendees. A number of years ago we had the Triple-Conjunction conference at Oglebay in Wheel-ing, West Virginia with over 300 attendees. It was a very memorable conference with lots of new ideas be-ing shared. Most research talks about people being depressed dur-ing the short days of winter but I’m kind of sad after June 21 since the days are getting shorter. Fortunately, this year, having the Maps Conference in July will perk me up. See ya’ll in a few days.

Jerry Vinski, Maps President Hillsborough, NC

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Old Maps

From The Constellation, Summer 1991, Vol. XXI, No. 2. President: Steve Mitch, President Elect: Joyce Towne, Past Presi-dent: Tom Stec, Secretary: Sam Storch, Treasurer: Steve Russo, Editor: Don Knapp Board Members: Jon Bell, Lee Ann Hennig, Fred Stutz. Philadelphia Welcomes MAPS More than 125 planetarians from 21 states and two foreign countries converged on Philadelphia May 2-4 for the annual MAPS conference, hosted by the Franklin Institute’s Fels Planetarium. Wednesday evening started with a meeting of the Rittenhouse Astronomy Club—the oldest such organization in the U.S.—and a talk by the late Bill Luzader titled “What People Think They Know about Astronomy.” The conference officially kicked off Thursday morning with a welcome from the Fel’s director Derrick Pitts, followed by workshops and paper session. Terrance Murtagh, former IPS president, was the luncheon speaker. On Thursday afternoon delegates chose from one of three side trips—to Chadds Ford for a tour of Spitz, a trip to the New Jersey State Museum Planetarium, or a group tour of historic Philadelphia. Thursday evening included a behind-the-scenes open house at the Fels followed by a live jazz concert under the stars by the Markley Band.

Friday’s agenda included a full line-up of workshops and papers. The Margaret Noble Address was delivered by Philip Sadler, the inventor of Starlab portable planetariums, who spoke about astronomical misconceptions. Morning sessions on Saturday closed out a successful conference and a few “hardy souls” traveled to Barrington, New Jersey, to visit the Edmund Scientific Company as a finale.

President’s Message Steve Mitch began his tenure as MAPS president with the perennial request for more input from society members. Mitch encouraged everyone to get fellow planetarians who are not members to join. At $10 a year membership fee, it’s a bargain, after all!

The issue rounded out with several short news items:

• The minutes of the MAPS general business meeting at the conference in Philadelphia presented by Joyce Towne.

• Treasurer’s report for the previous year with total deposits of $9,726.50 and expenses of $7,719.57. When the bal-ance was added to the previous year’s balance it left MAPS with a total of $13,725.76.

• Don Knapp requested that anyone going to the solar eclipse in Mexico or Hawaii that summer to please share pho-tos and stories with the editor for the next edition of The Constellation.

• There was also a remembrance of Marjorie H. Gardner, 1924-1991. Marjorie was a major supporter of MAPS in the National Science Foundation-sponsored Cooperative College-School Science (CCSS) program, which result-ed in the publication of Under Roof, Dome, and Sky by MAPS in 1973. She was the director of the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California at Berkeley from 1984 to 1989.

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In the time it took the light to travel from Fomalhaut to your eyes, these stories surfaced from the past to the present. ’Til next time when we time travel again. . . .

John T. Meader MAPS Archivist/Historian Northern Stars Planetarium 15 Western Ave., Fairfield, Maine 04937 207-453-7668 jtmeader@myfairpoint.net www.northern-stars.com

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Northern MAPS Conjunction By Alan Davenport Three Maine MAPS'ers gathered to observe the transit of Mercury May 9th as clouds threatened to hide all the ex-citement. Our original plan was to gather at the Francis Malcolm Science Center in Easton, Maine, where director Larry Berz planned to show off their new mirror full dome system. The Center has received a desperately needed shot in the financial arm with this system that was donated by a couple from out of state, and other contributions from the community. Unfortunately, the trip to the 'county' as the largest northern part of Maine is called, was not to happen. The weather for transit day was dour for the Easton area, so plans changed. Larry and I traveled south instead to John Meader's lovely home in Fairfield, Maine. John oper-ates a traveling business with two different sizes of Starlab domes, a business that has sustained him since the 1990's. He took the day off to enjoy the transit. Missing the tour of Larry's facility, was made less crushing by the presence of Hillman's Bakery across the street from John's house. It was a conjunction of three planetarians and no public audience, but Larry set up to reach out to students and staff of the Maine School of Science and Mathematics where he teaches. Using his laptop and a wifi connection to YouTube LiveStream, we all made appearances to talk about the transit and the thrill of astronomy despite the prevalent cloud cover. The broadcast lasted only one hour as the cloud cover effectively censored the celestial drama. Occasional breaks in the clouds gave us exciting views of the tiny planet as well as a small sunspot group that must now hold the record for the most observed sunspot of all time with the many people around the globe who caught this long lasting transit of Mercury. I proved that a good telescope was required to see the small planet. I could not see either the planet or the sun-spot using eclipse glasses with no magnification, or filtered 8-power binoculars.

The best of several captures of the planet against the Sun’s disk. Composite image by John Meader.

Larry Berz projects as John Meader juggles cameras.

Mercury as “black drop” at the end of the transit. Image by John Meader.

Streaming outreach for the Malcolm Science Center featured all three of us.

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My Sky Tonight Workshop Museum educators, please join us for a free My Sky Tonight workshop to bring the excitement of astronomy to pre-K children and their families. Each participant will receive a free toolkit of hands-on astronomy activities designed for 3 to 5-year-old children, and tested at multiple museums. The goal of this workshop is to provide educators with the opportunity to learn methods of engaging young children and their families in activities related to astronomy, including some of the stepping stones to astronomy, such as exploring near versus far, and observing changing shadows. Participants will gain the following through participation in the workshop: • Detailed descriptions of astronomy activities for preschool-aged children. • An education toolkit with the materials needed for implementing the activities at your venue • Content knowledge in astronomy • Strategies we have found to be successful in engaging preschool-age children and their families. • Membership in the Astronomy from the Ground Up online community, a support network of peers from all over

the country that have participated in similar astronomy workshops for informal educators. We are offering the six-week online workshop four times: September 19 - October 28, 2016 October 11 - November 18, 2016 January 17 - February 24, 2017 February 27 - April 7, 2017 Applications for the Fall 2016 workshops are due by July 31. For more information, and to apply to participate in this free workshop: http://goo.gl/L1SMaJ My Sky Tonight: Early Childhood Pathways to Astronomy is a project of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP), in partnership with a team of early childhood researchers and museum educators, funded by a National Sci-ence Foundation grant. Here is a little more about the project and our organization: http://www.astrosociety.org/education/my-sky-tonight/

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East Kentucky Science Center and Planetarium By Steven LJ Russo, Director

As of my last writing, we were preparing for A STEM Conference and Astronomy Day and both were very successful. In April, the EKSC was host to the 2016 Kentucky Girls STEM Collaborative Conference. Over 100 girls, par-ents, and teachers attended the conference consisting of guest speakers, panel discussions, hands-on activi-ties, and planetarium shows. Guest speakers included Tracy Prater, PhD.; an Aerospace Engineer from NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Materials and Processes Laboratory in Huntsville, Alabama. National Astronomy Day in May, attracted over 150 people for an afternoon of hands on Astronomy activi-ties and planetarium shows.

Also in May, all of the college presidents from the KCTCS system (Kentucky Community and Technical College) had an evening of their Presidents Retreat at the Science Center. The exhibit hall was transformed into a banquet hall and live concert venue to feed and entertain the guests. Planetarium programs were also presented. And a few days before writing this, the EKSC and its staff were honored by the Floyd County Chamber of Commerce, with its 2015 – 2016 Partner in Education Award. The chamber gives out awards each year to indi-viduals and businesses that support and contribute to the community. My staff and I had no idea that we were getting this, and thought we were just invited to dinner!

Hubble Captures the Beating Heart of the Crab Nebula

At the center of the Crab Nebula, located in the constel-lation Taurus, lies a celestial "beating heart" that is an example of extreme physics in space. The tiny object blasts out blistering pulses of radiation 30 times a sec-ond with unbelievable clock-like precision. Astronomers soon figured out that it was the crushed core of an ex-ploded star, called a neutron star, which wildly spins like a blender on puree. The burned-out stellar core can do this without flying apart because it is 10 billion times stronger than steel. This incredible density means that the mass of 1.4 suns has been crushed into a solid ball of neutrons no bigger than the width of a large city. This Hubble image captures the region around the neutron star. It is unleashing copious amounts of energy that are pushing on the expanding cloud of debris from the supernova explosion — like an animal rattling its cage. This includes wave-like tsunamis of charged particles embedded in deadly magnetic fields.

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MAPS will join with planetarians and regionals from across the country at the St. Louis national conference in October 2017. We hope many of our members will attend, but all of our MAPS members might not be able to make the trip to enjoy the full benefit of collaboration that we rely on to boost our energy each year. With that in mind, the Executive Com-mittee intends to encourage members to host state/area meetings around the MAPS region, preferably during the late spring of 2017. There will be financial support as well as publicity and communication tools to help get out the word. This is a great opportunity for smaller facilities to host a 1, 2 or 3-day gathering of planetarians in their area. The intention is to have several meetings distributed around the MAPS region geo-graphically to make attendance convenient and affordable even for those planning to go to the St. Louis conference. It is also an opportunity to have an informal exchange of ideas as well as talks on a variety of different subjects of interest to you. If you would like to consider hosting one of these, or find out more about it, please contact Kevin Williams or Jerry Vinsky (our fearless leaders) to discuss it. We hope to develop plans, with your support, that can be finally confirmed and announced at the 2016 Conference in Waldorf MD. Feel free to contact us just to explore the idea.

Host a MAPS Area Meeting in 2017!

Nassau College planetarium shows off some program tips at the Long Island conference in 2015.

Juno Mission Status Report: Team Begins Powering Up Science Instruments The engineers and scientists working on NASA’s Juno mission have been busying themselves, getting their newly arrived Jupiter orbiter ready for operations around the largest planetary inhabitant in the solar system. Juno successfully entered Jupiter's orbit during a 35-minute engine burn on Monday, July 4. Confirmation that the burn had completed was received on Earth at 8:53 pm. PDT (11:53 p.m. EDT) that evening. As planned, the spacecraft returned to high-rate communications on July 5 and powered up five of its science instruments on July 6. Per the mission plan, the remaining science instruments will be powered up before the end of the month. Juno’s science instruments had been turned off in the days leading up to Jupiter orbit insertion. The Juno team has scheduled a short trajectory correction maneuver on July 13 to refine the orbit around Jupiter. "Prior to launch five years ago we planned a date and time for the Jupiter orbit insertion burn and the team nailed it,” said Rick Nybakken, project manager for Juno from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "We are in our planned 53.4 day orbit. Now we are focusing on preparing for our fourth and final main engine burn, which will put us in our 14-day sci-ence orbit on October 19.” The next time Juno’s orbit carries it close by the planet will be on Aug. 27. The flyby is expected to provide some preliminary science data. "We had to turn all our beautiful instruments off to help ensure a successful Jupiter orbit insertion on July 4,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “But next time around we will have our eyes and ears open. You can expect us to release some information about our findings around September 1."

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Astronomical Numbers By Thomas Wm. Hamilton This new book provides information in English and metric units, plus Astronomical Units where appropriate, and conversion values for these, lightyears and parsecs. All planets and dwarf planets, selected aster-oids and moons — sizes, orbits, etc. Constel-lations sizes and ranks, Local Group galaxies, moon discoverers, highest mountains and largest craters on planets and moons; orbital periods and speeds; escape velocities and surface gravities; and so much more. 92 pages. Available from Strategic Book Publishing after June 1.

Treasurer Address Change This is a reminder/notification that the snail-mail address of the Treasurer/Membership Chair has changed recently. Keith Johnson has retired from Rown University, and while his e-mail address there will remain valid until he decides to migrate to Mars, his Rowan snail-mail address will likely no longer work very well. Please send all MAPS-related material to: Keith Johnson P.O. Box 64 Clementon NJ 08021

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