This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Schools

Public Can Go Stargazing This Week at West Planetarium

Visitors as well as students can learn about the stars and planets at Wauwatosa West High School.

Parents and the general public will get a chance Tuesday and Wednesday evenings to experience something more familiar to Wauwatosa Schools children: the cosmos, projected for your viewing pleasure at the Wauwatosa West High School Planetarium.

In this case, the theme of the 7 p.m. shows is “Bad Astronomy: Myths and Misconceptions.” Presumably, though, history is a teacher and those misconceptions will be laid to rest and corrected, amounting to "good" astronomy.

Just what can uninitiated adults learn from a visit to the planetarium? A visit to the school last week revealed a top-drawer learning experience for Tosa students.

Find out what's happening in Wauwatosawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“There’s something mystical about the moon and stars," said West student Emma Jushka. "Most science classes are about the world around us, but in astronomy we learn about things that we cannot touch.”

Students who take the semester-long elective astronomy science class at West with teacher Todd DeZeeuw learn about stars, constellations, the movement of the planets in our solar system, asteroids, satellites, the space station and much more.

Find out what's happening in Wauwatosawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“I signed up for astronomy because I knew we’d be going in the planetarium, and I really wanted to go in there,” said Cody Coppersmith, “but, now I have a newfound respect for astronomy.  It really is a challenging science class.”

In class on Tuesday, the students looked at the night sky in the Gary E. Sampson Planetarium using “Spitzie,” the Optomechanical Star Projector in the middle of the room.

The sphere on the top side of the projector shows stars and the Milky Way, and the lower part of the apparatus uses gears and mirrors to project the planets in their proper positions in the night sky.  The projector can display what the sky looked like on any day in history, and allows the students to study the sky at night and during different seasons in the middle of the school day.

The students identified constellations in the fall sky with a laser pointer while consulting their starfinders, year-round star maps that rotate by aligning the date with the time to show what stars will be visible on a particular night.  

Elementary kids enjoy planetarium, too

DeZeeuw also presents about 140 shows per year to other groups, including class field trips, senior citizen groups and the monthly public program. 

On Tuesday, a second-grade class from McKinley Elementary School came on a field trip to visit the Planetarium for “SkyTellers,” a show about Native American stories and modern scientific explanations for the phases of the moon and the changing of the seasons.  

The younger students were excited to see the stars and moon projected on the dome of the Planetarium and especially enjoyed learning about the constellations visible in the sky at this time of year.

DeZeeuw remembered that he became interested in astronomy as a young child.

“When I was 6 years old, I watched Apollo 11 land on the moon.  It was a historic event on TV,” he said.

Apollo 11 was the first manned spacecraft to land on the moon, and astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin Jr. made history as they became the first humans to walk on the moon. Astronaut Michael Collins stayed aboard the Apollo 11 command module while his colleagues made their touchdown in the lunar lander.

DeZeeuw enjoys teaching others about space.

“My primary goal with guests is to teach them about what they see in the sky, and to encourage them to keep on learning,” he said.

This week's public Planetarium shows

The Public Planetarium Shows will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. The show being presented is “Bad Astronomy: Myths and Misconceptions.” 

Admission is free, but reservations are recommended. Visit the webpage here for information on how to reserve seats.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Wauwatosa