Portable planetarium comes to Brentwood
As the light blue sky quickly turned to night and stars shone brightly above the western hemisphere, students “ooh'd” and “ahh'd” from the gymnasium floor.
“Wow! We're flying!” one shouted.
“This is crazy,” another muttered.
Inside a 14-foot-by-24-foot inflatable canvas dome, the wonders of the world came to life. Brentwood Middle School seventh- and eighth-graders this month were transported to Stonehenge in England and the University of Pittsburgh's Allegheny Observatory to view constellations in the March sky.
A portable planetarium, mounted on the school's gymnasium floor and utilizing a computer and projector, brought the Big Dipper, Orion's Belt and the North Star to life.
“It's fun education,” said Brentwood eigth-grader Ivy Feldmeier, 13. “I learned how to find Gemini in the sky. That's my sign.”
The portable planetarium, transported by volunteers and free to local school districts, is owned by PittCon, a nonprofit organization that runs an annual conference and exposition on laboratory science, cosponsored by the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh and Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh.
The conference began in the 1940s, when Pittsburgh was thriving in the steel industry, said Don Antczak, planetarium committee chairman and a retired science teacher from the Hampton Township School District.
Yet, PittCon, which draws between 15,000 and 18,000 people worldwide, hasn't been held in the Steel City since the 1960s.
Several years ago, a Science Week was launched to offer workshops for local teachers and students in the conference's host city, Antczak said. In 2008, a portable planetarium was purchased for Science Week, held in New Orleans.
PittCon leaders realized that other than during the annual conference, the portable planetarium simply sat in their offices, Antczak said.
So, a group of volunteers were trained to teach a 30-minute program for Pittsburgh-area schools with the planetarium transported in the back of their cars.
“You can project the sky any time of day or night, anywhere in the world for them to see,” said Tom Conti, of Wheeling, W.Va., a retired chemist, who brought the planetarium, along with Nicholas Barsic of Murrysville, to Brentwood this week. “We can even go to the North Pole.”
Brentwood seventh-grade science teacher Kristin Papariello learned about the planetarium after attending a conference put on by the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh.
After her students went through the planetarium Friday, they returned to school the Tuesday after the holiday break to talk about what they had seen in the sky.
“I just hope that it connects what I taught them in astronomy and what they're actually seeing in the sky,” she said. If it weren't for the free visit from the portable planetarium to Brentwood, Papariello said, she wouldn't have had the opportunity to show her students the constellations in this form. Field trips are limited to one a year.
The volunteers take the portable planetarium to about eight schools a year, Antczak said. It will visit the Bethel Park School District in November and three schools in May.
“I hope it provides an appreciation for astronomy,” Antczak said.
Stephanie Hacke is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 412-388-5818 or shacke@tribweb.com.
