Q & A with an astronomer
Well...did you ever wonder how a planetarium coordinator thinks? I just knew it! Here's the juicy detail:
...Choosing astronomy: "I'm not exactly sure how I latched onto the idea (in fourth grade), but I'd heard or seen something about Halley's comet … and I just got curious. … (I got) a small telescope for Christmas and I took it out and tried to find things like Saturn and Jupiter and things on the moon. By eighth grade, I'd decided what I wanted to do."
Planetarium redux: "Working at the planetarium (in college) I always thought in the back of my mind that this would be kind of a fun job to have. The director then … made it fun. It looked like he was having a good time. But I never really thought about it as 'I'm gonna go get my degree and come back and get his job.' "
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posted by Tako John @ 7:41 PM
1 Comments:
HI, I work as a Planetarium Technician for 10 years. 6 years at the Air Force Academy Planetarium and the 7 years at the Planetarium At Delta College in Stockton. These jobs were my dream job! I really loved doing it. At the Academy and before computers our 3 tech designed, buiilt the projectors neccessary to show all of the effects that happened in the dome's sky. What fun using motors mirrors, first surface, lapse desolve projectors and building the horizon projectors for the different landscapes that our show writers needed. We were able to make zoom lenes and the use of small light bulb projector to have sence like the 2001 sence. It was a lot of work. I am sorry to say that todays shows are all canned and that the use of computers and TV projectors have taken away some of the fun devices. I hope that someday you will again go to a Planetarium and have a live lecturer, who will have enough knowledge so that after a program he will be able to answer questions. It still can be a fun job. Just be good with computers.
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