The planetarium at UW is receiving much needed renovations after receiving donations from the state, as well as a private interest group.
Danny Dale, department head of Physics and Astronomy, said the planetarium was first built in the 1970s and needed renovations due to the outdated technologies involved. The University of Wyoming received an $870,000 donation from the Windy Ridge Foundation to be used for renovations. Dale said the foundation upped their donation to $1,200,000 and the state donated $350,000.
“A lot of misconceptions in astronomy are rooted in the fact that we are fixed on planet earth and when we look up we see a two-dimensional representation of what’s out there”, Dale said.
Dale said that this new system is a more effective teaching tool. The old system was a ball that would project stars onto the black dome of the planetarium to simulate the night sky. Travis Laurance, lab coordinator for the department of Physics and Astronomy, demonstrated the new system. The old black dome is now a white mesh dome, and the old ball is now two separate projectors that cast a single image.
Apart from the educational functions, there are also many different entertainment possibilities for the system. Dale said that the old system was a poor way to illustrate the night sky for students in that they are presenting a two-dimensional model of something that is three-dimensional.
Another advantage of the system is that it can display much more than just the night sky. Laurance explained that they could display models based off of different data sets.
“We have different features of the Milky Way Galaxy that we live in. We have a set for the halo, for the bulge, the entire solar system and even the trajectory of Voyager One,” Laurance said.
So far $687,763 of the funds have been spent for the project. Laurance said that whatever is left of the fund will be put toward replacing the bulbs in the projectors, maintaining and updating the system’s software and gaining other data sets and movies to be used on the system.
According to the University of Wyoming website, the planetarium has had its name changed to the Harry C. Vaughan UW Planetarium, in honor of the founder of the Windy Ridge Foundation. It is slated to open on Nov. 12 for students from Rock Springs.
