On Monday, October 20, the M. D. Anderson Planetarium presents an encore performance of…

On July 31, 2008, the Phoenix Mars Mission team announced the first direct evidence for water on the desert planet Mars. In this special presentation, we will take a look at Mars, what we know about it, and what we hope to learn in the future. We will see

• how Mars is similar to Earth, and how it is very different;
• why water is so important to Earth, and what it might mean for Mars;
• what finding water on Mars means about the possibility of life on Mars;
• and other exciting topics!

The show begins at 7:30 PM.  As always, admission is $5 per adult, $3 per child under 18, and $10 for a family of 3 or more. Lambuth students, faculty, and staff are admitted free with their ID.

Posted by Matthew R. Francis under Public Events | No Comments »

Please pardon the long title, and the slight departure in subject matter.  As always, what I write here is my own, and does not reflect the policies or opinions of Lambuth University, my employer.

I am somewhat hesitant to publish this on the planetarium website, since it could be construed as unduly political, and whatever I say will be viewed through the lens of each reader’s political opinions.  However, as a planetarium director and a strong believer in science education for the general public, I find it hard to let Senator John McCain’s comments about “overhead projectors” slide.

During the second and third presidential debates, Senator McCain used the Adler Planetarium in Chicago as an example of government waste.  He derided the $3 million upgrade in their nearly 40-year-old equipment as replacing an “overhead projector”, denigrating and belittling the project.  The Adler Planetarium is the oldest planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, and receives about a half-million visitors each year, about 40% of whom are children.  Many of the visitors come from the Chicago metropolitan area, which like most urban areas in the country (including Jackson) is exceedingly light-polluted.  This means that many of the visitors are unable to see more than a handful of the brightest stars—even on a clear night—due to the excessive amount of artificial lights.

The M. D. Anderson Planetarium is a much smaller facility in all respects:  we have a smaller potential audience, a smaller facility, and a much smaller staff (to wit, one part-time employee who happens to be me).  However, we also recently replaced our old “overhead projector”, which was only two years older than the current projector at the Adler, with a new digital projector.  This was a major undertaking that cost us well over $20,000, required extensive rewiring, and the development of all new programming.  I can only imagine what it must cost to run a planetarium as large as the Adler, in terms of both money and energy.

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Posted by Matthew R. Francis under Director's Notes | No Comments »

Earth obviously has life.  But, if we were looking at the Earth from outside the Solar System, could we detect it with current technology?  Likewise, if there is life on Mars, or Titan, or Enceladus, or wherever, is our equipment good enough to find it?

A recent article on Astronomy.com discusses using the Venus Express probe to study Earth. Since Venus Express is orbiting Venus, Earth appears in its instruments as a featureless dot, but the probe can try to identify the chemicals on Earth indicating life’s presence. This is similar to earlier missions to the Atacama Desert in Chile, which attempted to find microbes in the soil using technology similar to that of the Mars Rovers.

You might think that finding life is pretty easy, but experiments such as these show it isn’t quite so simple. Robotic probes tend to look for chemical tracers, since those are easy things to look for. However, life itself is more than just its chemicals, so it remains to be seen if missions like the Phoenix Mars lander will find life. In other words, if life exists on Mars, will the instruments on Phoenix be good enough to find it?

Speaking of Mars, on Monday, October 20, we present a revised and improved version of Water on Mars, Life on Mars.  On July 31, 2008, the Phoenix Mars Mission team announced the first direct evidence for water on the desert planet Mars. In this special presentation, we will take a look at Mars, what we know about it, and what we hope to learn in the future. We will see

• how Mars is similar to Earth, and how it is very different;
• why water is so important to Earth, and what it might mean for Mars;
• what finding water on Mars means about the possibility of life on Mars;
• and other exciting topics!

I hope you can join us on October 20 at 7:30 PM.  As always, admission is $5 per adult, $3 per child under 18, and $10 for a family of 3 or more. Lambuth students, faculty, and staff are admitted free with their ID.

Posted by Matthew R. Francis under Director's Notes & Science Ideas & Science News | No Comments »

Monday, October 6 at 7:30 PM, we present:

Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity

Admission is $5 per adult, $3 per child under 18, and $10 for a family of 3 or more. Lambuth students, faculty, and staff are admitted free with their ID.

Posted by Matthew R. Francis under Director's Notes | No Comments »