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"I just had a nice evening visit to the Cranbrook Institute of Science Center near Detroit. It is bit larger than our Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History with a nice Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton and life size mammoth covered in some sort of woolly stuff that felt like Angora. It has a huge collection of minerals and even numerous meteorites. Modern collections of various tribal artifacts with 3D narrators and virtual books. Lots of interactive exhibits for the curious kid inside us (see
https://www.flickr.com/photos/27241501@N03/albums/72157662453094692 ).
Best of all it has a 75 seat planetarium with an high resolution display system (using a Digistar 5 system like ours). The programs were a bit weird: "Mystery of the Christmas Star" proving Jesus was born 4BC; "Michigan Sky Tonight" where the presenter's jokes were followed by the Ta-Dum sound; and the final show was "Let it Snow", a psychedelic 30min 3D demo of xmas theme fractals and such. Where is the medical marijuana when you need it? The presenter did mention that the great square of Pegasus can be looked at as a baseball diamond with Pisces in the outfield, something I had not heard of before. Folks in Michigan rarely see the stars so planetariums are great around here.
The attached observatory was very similar to the updated SBMNH Palmer with a 20" CDK, etc. (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg9XuLNM-Bk ). The astronomer there was hoping for clear skies to confirm exoplanets found with the Kepler mission, actually the continuing K2 mission, in the area he had studied at Kitt Peak. Unfortunately, typical for Michigan, the sky barely let the Moon show for a moment and then clouded over. Thank your lucky stars that you live in Southern California for the number of days with a clear sky!
On other notes, our December Member's Meeting was terrific with presentations by Chuck McPartlin, Art Harris, Bob Richard, and Jerry Wilson. The Holiday Dinner had a few misunderstandings about what would be considered an astronomical related gift (USC Tennis shirt?) to exchange, but the conversations and food were wonderful.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sbaushots/albumsUntil we meet again in January, and I hope to see a full Farrand Hall audience for Sean Kelly, have an even better New Year!"
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Topic: 151221 Cranbrook Science Center visit (Read 2866 times)