Location: Adler Planetarium
Date: Thursday, August 21, 2014; 5:00-10:00
pm
Though my soul may
set in darkness
It will rise in
perfect light
I have loved the
stars too fondly
To be fearful of
the night
- Sarah Williams, ‘The Old Astronomer’
The heavens had opened up and
despite taking a cab, I was soaked when I arrived. I was supposed to attend today as a guest,
but then decided to volunteer instead, which turned out to be one of the best
decisions. Michael had sent out information
ahead of time as usual and this month’s theme was “Space Oddity” featuring of course, David Bowie – well, as an inspiration,
not in person. Michael mentioned that I
would be “mentoring” a new volunteer
Don. Wow, I was a veteran now.
I went up to get pizza and chatted
with Carrie for a bit and then Michael showed us our schedule. From 6:30-8 pm, I would be doing “Golden Record” with Don. From 8-8:30 pm I would be at the Historical
Artifacts section and then from 8:30-10 pm I would be at ‘SVL’, shadowing. This was
good since ‘SVL’ is the most
technical place in the museum and having someone who can guide you is helpful. There were 35 face-masks of David Bowie all
over the museum, in places such as behind display cases, as well as Jim
Lowell’s statue face! This would be one
of the scavenger hunts, where guests would be asked to locate all the
faces. Someone asked Michael if David Bowie was
expected to be here and Michael said this was not his usual commute!
 |
| Voyager |
We went for a tour and the first
stop was the ‘Planet Explorer’s’
classroom for the “Golden Record”
activity. The idea was to replicate the
metal plaques that are on board ‘Voyager
1’ and ‘Voyager 2’
spacecraft’s. Launched in 1977, these
spacecraft’s have gone further than any other man-made object and are now in
interstellar space. On these records are
images and sounds found in nature, as well as music from various cultures,
speech and other printed messages.
Assembled by the legendary Carl Sagan, we were now asking people to make
their own replica’s – on golden colored card-stock paper – and display it on the
community wall inside the classroom.
Then at the end of the evening they could come back and claim them. As the guests would come in for the activity,
we were to ask them, “What message would
you sent to the aliens” and then leave them to it. Also on the wall was a playlist of the one
song that they would like to include on the record.
Michael said that there was a ‘Bluetooth’ speaker in case we wanted to
play music off our phone and he said that he would demonstrate if his phone’s
battery had some juice left. I said that
we would offer our phones, if we were allowed to keep them! We were asked to surrender our phones during our shift and so this lead to laughter in the group, and
Michael joined in as well. The group
left me and Don – my shadow for this activity – to prepare the room for the
guests. Don and I had met during
orientation and we set about arranging colored pens and pencils on each table. At 6:30 pm people started coming in and I
would deliver my opening remarks and concluded by saying, “Remember that the aliens may not speak English”. Everyone was having fun with their designs
and we got everything from drawings of houses to drawings of the occult! There were fart jokes, drawings of people’s
favorite things and even messages like, “Come
take us”, wherein I said to them, “Be
careful what you wish for”. The
song’s list was growing as well and first up was “Imagine” followed by Brittany Spears and even “Here comes the sun” - one of my favorites. The
wall was filling up with plaques and songs when I noticed a girl writing a poem
on one of the records. It was lovely and
apt for the surroundings, and I had to ask her about it. She said that it was a poem called “The Old Astronomer To his Pupil” by
Sarah Williams, and the instant I saw it, I knew that it would be one of the
most perfect things I would ever read. We
talked about it and I said it would be the wall’s pride to have it up
there. I reminded her to come pick it up
at the end of the evening and she said that didn’t need it, at which I asked
permission to take it with me.
My next stop was at the
Historical artifacts station and my job was to request people to leave their
drinks outside the room, since many of the artifacts were over 100 years
old. During a period of slow traffic I
went and chatted with Lauren, who was facilitating this program. She showed me various artifacts, including
texts from Galileo’s era. There was also
a spirit lamp, a time piece, a news article and some pictures from mid-19th
Century ‘Sun’, which showed that
there was life on Moon - claiming that
if God was omnipotent, why wouldn't there be left everywhere. There was a box which was first displayed in
the ‘World’s Fair’, held in Chicago,
which claimed to receive light from a star 40 light years away and used it to
generate electricity. I told Lauren that
having spent years trying to make photovoltaic devices, this was impossible –
unless they were using materials that are now extinct!
My final stop for the evening
was in ‘Space Visualization Laboratory’
and I went in to see Dave over at the ‘Microsoft
NUIverse’ table, while an 'Astrophysicist' delivered a lecture in the
background on 3-D simulations. People
are always fascinated by this table and today was no exception. As I came in, Dave was telling a group how
all of the satellites of ‘Uranus’ are
named after a ‘Shakespearean’
character. As the discussion got
interesting, at one stage the lecturer got upset that we were making
noise. Dave left at 9 pm and I took over
the guest engagement role. A couple of
guys came over and one of them was actually a telescope volunteer over here and
was visiting with his brother. I told
them about the satellites of ‘Uranus’
and hearing ‘Shakespeare’s’ name, two
other girls headed over to see what we were doing. I told everyone that while other planets and
satellites were good, I preferred our home planet’s view. Three girls came and they were from different
parts of the country and world and so we zoomed in on the image to find their
home location.
 |
| The record on my wall |
It was nearing the end, but not
before a couple stopped by, and perhaps it was to impress his date, but the guy
started asking questions on the curvature of space around the sun. Alright then, definitely time for me to
leave! The girl who had written the poem
on the record visited 'SVL' and as we chatted, I learned that her name was Sam,
and she was from Pittsburgh, meaning we could definitely talk for hours. She asked me directions to the nearest train
station and I said that I would walk with her.
I collected the poem that Sam had written and we chatted about
Pittsburgh on our way to the station. It
had been an excellent evening, not least because of the wonderful gift that Sam
gave me and which occupies a proud spot on my office wall.
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