Planet experts map new way
THIS week, for the first time ever, the International Planetarium Society (IPS) held its biennial conference virtually.
People from around the world “met’’ over three sessions lasting several hours, each organised to coincide with convenient local times around the globe.
The virtual conference replaced the one that would have been held in Edmonton, Canada, in June, which had to be cancelled after years of planning. Edmonton had been chosen as the site for the 2020 conference as long ago as 2017.
As we all know, the world is very different right now because of COVID-19. Many meetings and conferences have been cancelled, or held online with attendees far apart.
This was an interesting challenge for planetarium professionals, because so much of what we do involves creating visual effects on a dome that represents the whole sky.
However, it has been a successful week, with presenters doing well to make the most of the requirement to display their work on a flat screen.
An important topic for discussion was the increasing value of planetariums in education. This included the latest ideas about how planetariums can explain shadows, and the tilt of the Earth’s axis and its effects.
However, other sciences are included in astronomy, so the planetarium is a wonderful visualisation tool. More and more digital effects for the dome are explaining subjects such as particle physics and even the workings of the human body. The much-discussed topic of climate change is also one in which planetariums are becoming increasingly involved.
One of the sessions on Wednesday focused on planetariums in Africa.
It is only quite recently that we saw the formation of the African Planetarium Association, whose first president, Susan Murabana Owen, is based in Kenya. There is a lot of enthusiasm on that continent, and there was even discussion about the frame of a planetarium dome that was made from bamboo!
The IPS is a separate organisation from the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which is the world body of professional astronomers. Like me, many people are members of both, and certain common goals are being discussed to a greater extent.
Public communication of astronomy is important to both organisations, and it is the topic that is central for planetariums. This year’s Communicating Astronomy to the Public conference, organised about every two years by the IAU, was due to be held in Sydney next month, but it was another victim of COVID-19.
However, the conference is now planned for early next year, also in Sydney, and I am sure that this will build on many of the topics discussed this week by the IPS.
I’m very much hoping that the next IPS conference, due to be held in 2022 in St Petersburg, Russia, will go ahead as planned. Russian interest in astronomy is very high, and in recent times there have been big moves forward in the planetarium industry there.
In 2007 a new planetarium was opened in Nizhny Novgorod to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the launch of the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. The Moscow Planetarium had a major update several years ago, and St Petersburg’s new one, called Planetarium 1, will be the central point of interest in 2022. With a dome diameter of 37m, it is the largest in the world.
I can’t finish without first expressing my great joy that the Demo-2 craft successfully splashed down this week.
This was the first commercial launch of people into orbit, and it carried two US astronauts to the International Space Station, where they had a relatively short stay. My only disappointment was seeing a number of pleasure boats closing in on the floating capsule before the astronauts could be collected.
Secondly, thanks to the astute reader who spotted a typographical error of my own in last week’s article. Of course, Venus is currently visible in the northeastern, not northwestern, morning sky before sunrise. It’s a fine sight.