Emma Gray
Editor
Parkland’s William M. Staerkel Planetarium will be celebrating its 30th anniversary during the month of October.
At 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 7, the planetarium will be holding a birthday party for their star projector machine named “Carl,” after the German optics company Carl Zeiss that made the machine.
At the party, people will be allowed to come up to “Carl” to get a closer look. David Leake, director of the planetarium, says he hopes he will be able to allow children to stand up right next to the machine for pictures. He also wants to have some of the machine taken apart so adults can peer into its inner workings.
The birthday party will also include a cake and a large birthday card for the star machine.
The planetarium will be showing “Odyssey” on Friday and Saturday nights during October. “Odyssey” was the first show to ever open at the planetarium.
“We call this the comprehensive planetarium show,” said Leake. “We do a tour of the solar system, we…talk about the galaxy, then we talk about things in the galaxy and [the] life span of stars…Since this was the first show we opened with we wanted to show off some of the special effects of the place.”
The special effects of the first opening were quite different than the special effects patrons will see now, however.
In 2010 the planetarium received a major renovation during which all of about 50 old slide projectors were taken out and replaced with two new digital projectors.
“Odyssey” was written by Jim Manning, the director of the planetarium when it opened, and has since been revamped by the planetarium’s current production designer Waylena McCully to accommodate the change to a digital system.
Before the renovation the show was made of individual still images rotated through the projectors, with some projectors having special jobs, like being the exploding star projector or the black hole projector. With special effects projectors, each special image could only be projected onto one part of the dome by its designated projector.
Now the planetarium is able to have animated films that move around the dome.
The story told in “Odyssey” is similar to the one told when it first opened with only minor changes needed to update it.
“From 1987 there was some of it that was out of date,” Leake said. “We hadn’t seen any close up pictures of Pluto…We flew by the planet Neptune in 1989, two years after we opened here. So we had to update it. Back in [1987] we didn’t know there were any other planets besides the ones in our own solar system…Some of the things we found out about Mars [were] updated.”
One thing that was kept from the original show was the audio of a Native American narration.
“There’s a chief sitting around a campfire and the little kid says…‘Grandfather, tell us a story about stars.’ That is an audio piece that was lifted from the original show,” Leake said. “One of the people working here at the time used his daughter as one of the children…The guy who plays the chief used to run the theatre.”
Other notable changes from the time of the planetarium’s dedication include the replacement of the seats, the switch to efficient L.E.D. lighting, and the painting of the dome from a glossy white to a matte white to accommodate the brighter projectors.
“Not only did we have 29-year-old seats that needed replac[ing], but the old seats were arranged in a concentric arrangement, which wasn’t ideal for digital programming,” Leake said. “Now every seat in the house is really good.”
Concentric seats meant that every seat was facing the middle, all the way around the dome. Now, all of the seats face the one spot on the dome, so no seat is facing away from the action of a film.
The most notable thing that has remained the same is the star machine, “Carl.”
“[‘Carl’] shows its age because you can…see it says ‘West Germany’ on it,” Leake said.
The German state was bisected into two halves—west and east, capitalist and communist—by the western powers and the Soviet Union after the Second World War. West Germany and East Germany ceased to exist in October 1990 when they reunified into a single nation.
“[‘Carl’] is not computerized. It’s all mechanical with light bulbs and gears…When [it] was installed it was the latest thing. In fact, the very first one installed in the western hemisphere is [‘Carl’].”
There are only two other star machines of the same make in the United States as they stopped being sold under the same name when Germany reunified.
“Carl” is getting old and with that come inevitable breakage of different parts. Occasionally Leake has to get creative in how he fixes these breakages.
“My job is to keep [the star machine] running,” Leake said. “Because its use has declined…So if something happens to [it] the college isn’t going to bring over a German technician to fix it. Right now…the moon is broken and I have tried to repair it without much luck.”
The problem with the moon is a shaft that turns, allowing the moon to cycle through its different phases. The shaft is able to be turned by hand, though, allowing the planetarium to show one moon phase per use.
The most creative fix Leake has had to perform was on one of the lights in the star machine.
“[A light bulb] burned out,” Leake said. “Well, with this being a German projector you don’t go to Lowe’s and buy light bulbs. They’ve all got strange voltages…So I checked into the bulb and they said the bulb is only about $40-50, but it would cost me a fortune to ship it from Germany. I thought what I am I going to do. I knew the voltage of the bulb and I knew its size, so I did some searching and I actually found something…In [the projector] is a bulb for the running light—like the side light—for a sailboat.”
The aluminum dome inside of the planetarium the stars are projected onto is still the original metal as well. Leake says that the metal has stayed in good shape over the years.
The stain glass window in the front lobby is original as well. It has seen some work done to the wood around it, but otherwise is the same. The window, created by Arthur Stern, is called a solar window because of the way it transmits light into the planetarium in different ways according to the season.
The planetarium was dedicated on Oct. 1, 1987, but the first show was not until near the end of the month. At the same time the theatre right across from the planetarium was being opened for the first time, as well. Inside the theatre is a display case celebrating their 30th anniversary.
For more information on the Staerkel Planetarium, visit parkland.edu/planetarium.
