Amita Manandhar
The Paw Print
“There were over 800 children here, it was crazy,” said Kelly Shelton, a volunteer at the grand reopening event of the Zacheis Planetarium located in the Adams State University.
That was the kind of crowd and reception the planetarium got when it reopened its door for the public. The planetarium had an open house to celebrate its grand reopening from Thursday till Saturday of last week. The planetarium hosted various activities ranging from talks, tours, documentary shows to sun and star watching from Sept. 6 to 8.
Several people from the community attended the event on Thursday, Sept. 6. In the evening there was a telescope set up outside the planetarium to watch the stars. On Friday, Sept. 7 the local elementary, middle and high school children were given a tour of the planetarium in small groups. There were several educational activities and game booths set up for the children to participate in during their planetarium tour.
The planetarium also showed several informative movies about the solar system and universe in the newly constructed digital full dome projection system. The event and the movies were free to the public.
Alamosa resident Judith Greenwood said that she came to see two shows on Friday night. Greenwood further said that the climate one was her favorite because it was very high-tech and it was very beautiful to see what is happening all over the world. Greenwood was also there on Saturday to watch different shows that were showing that day.
“It is a wonderful facility and we enjoyed it a lot,” said she.
The documentary shows were all informative, some of them were about climate and some were about the projects that being carried out by NASA. One particular show was about the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) project. It is a project that is trying to explore the edge of the solar system. The show gave information about how the sun and the solar wind are helping to protect the life in earth by keeping away the cosmic rays. At the end of the show people were educated about the constellations and many newly discovered planets inside the solar system.
With its high-tech full dome projector the planetarium is able to educate the people in an innovative way. The newly renovated planetarium will not only help with the outreach and education of space; it will also inform people about how the funds are used to carry out different space research projects.
“As a taxpayer we spend a lot of money on space and space research, so it’s interesting and exciting to see how that money is spent,” said Larry Greenwood, who had come to see the shows in the planetarium.
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