On Flandrau Planetarium'sSilver Screen A Star is Born at Every Performance...

In 1973, O. Richard Norton was astonished. He had been invited to the Univer-sity of Arizona in Tucson to design and direct a planetarium. The job offered him an opportunity to expand the work he had been doing for the previous 10 years at the University of Nevada. As an astron-omer, he was well acquainted with Tucson's reputation as "The Astronomy Capital of the World."

What astonished him, once he started integrating himself into the Tucson com-munity, was the innocence of the local citizenry: there are more telescopes and celestial observatories concentrated within a 50-mile radius of Tucson than anywhere else on Earth, but hardly anyone other than the resident scientists were aware of that fact or understood its dazzling implications.

"I was very surprised that virtually nobody I talked to in the city of Tucson really knew that they were in a world cen-ter for astronomy. The word was not get-ting out. People did not realize what a unique setting they were in. Astronomy here has grown enormously since that time, and it is one of the major industries in Southern Arizona. It touches all aspects of life, including the city lights, which are shielded to reduce light pollution," Norton said.

Shortly before Norton's arrival, the Uni-versity of Arizona received an unrestricted gift of more than $1 million from the estate of Grace H. Flandrau, a wealthy and mag-nanimous writer who had lived in Tucson from 1960 until her death in 1971.

The Grace H. Flandrau Planetarium, built with an eventual investment of $2.4 million, was opened in 1975.

Planetariums are unusual institutions in the complex world of the sciences. Microbiologists do not have a theater in which to translate their work. Geneticists, entomologists, cardiovascular researchers - all are in the same frustrating boat when they try to explain the nature of their labors to the lay person. Astronomers could easily be added to the list were it not for the peculiar theater of the planetarium.

Reduced to its lowest common denominator, a planetarium is nothing more than a domed building with a projector that focuses images onto the dome's interior surface. Norton took this simple definition and, using his background in astronomy and optical engineering, created a world where illusion is so powerful, conventional reality fades with a nearly imperceptible subtlety.

Norton's task was an uncommon one. The planetarium was to be a part of the UofA's Department of Astronomy. It was also to be the main instrument for popularizing the highly complex astronomicalwork progressing at the observatories in the mountains surrounding Tucson. In short, he had to create a facility that was technically modern with programs that were at once impeccably accurate (for the sake of the scientists), educational (for the sake of the 35,000 university students), and wonderfully entertaining (for the sake of visitors who are curious but easily bored).

One of the key tools used to meet these demands was a fisheye projector, designed and built on the spot. A primitive version made its debut at the Seattle World's Fair in 1960.

"That one was more of a gimmick than anything else," Norton said. "I was involved in this way back in 1963, at the University of Nevada, where we built the very first real fisheye motion picture projection system. What the fisheye does is to project an image over the entire dome surface. What you're doing is converting the dome into a terrestrial environment, rather than an astronomical environment. Anything you can point a camera at, you can use it for."

FLANDRAU

The fisheye, combined with circuits that allow the use of 150 projection devices, produces remarkable theater - some of it intimately linked to the astronomy world, and some of it all but divorced from astronomy. In the former category, there is a film scheduled for completion in early 1984 that will provide visitors with a 20-minute tour of the Tucson area, including helicopter views of Kitt Peak National Observatory, where there are no less than 18 telescopes, the Catalina Observatories in the Santa Catalina Mountains directly north of the university, and the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, operated by the Smithsonian Institution on Mount Hopkins in the Santa Rita Mountains, south of Tucson.

and some of it all but divorced from astronomy. In the former category, there is a film scheduled for completion in early 1984 that will provide visitors with a 20-minute tour of the Tucson area, including helicopter views of Kitt Peak National Observatory, where there are no less than 18 telescopes, the Catalina Observatories in the Santa Catalina Mountains directly north of the university, and the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, operated by the Smithsonian Institution on Mount Hopkins in the Santa Rita Mountains, south of Tucson.

An earlier fisheye film shown numerous times in the planetarium, Arizona Spectacular, was an enlarged and more or less similar tour-but one which focused on the state's more distant and dramatic attractions, such as Canyon de Chelly and the serene ruins at Wupatki National Monument near Flagstaff. Both films are invaluable to out-of-state visitors; they manage to inform and illustrate-using a dramatic medium-without resorting to commercial bravado.

The planetarium itself, like the fisheye projector, has been the stage for many nonastronomical programs. In 1981, Béla Bartók's gothic opera, Bluebeard's Castle, with the music rescored for organ and synthesizer, was performed there. In 1982, the planetarium's dome was transformed into the Sonoran Desert under a deep blue sky flecked with stars. The desert silhouette formed the backdrop for a performance by Richard Shelton, one of Tucson's most engaging poets, who read from his works. Less theatrical, but no less indicative of the diversity to which the planetarium has been employed, was the wedding of Richard W. Wortley and Denise E. Fuchs. As students and science fiction buffs they had worked for two years in the planetarium. To them it seemed appropriate they should also have their wedding there. Undoubtedly, the 150-seat planetarium theater has a potential that need not include science, but of course the primary mission is scientific and educational. The heart of this mission is a complex system including a Minolta Series IV star projector shaped like a dumbbell with a large ball at each end. One ball projects 4300 stars in the northern hemisphere, the other, 4300 stars of the southern hemisphere. There also are 25 Altec speakers, three tape decks and mixers, and three data track automation systems, as well as a laser system for light shows. The star projector, designed specifically to meet the needs of the Flandrau Planetarium, contains over 75 individual projection systems capable of illustrating on Volunteer Erica Ferguson at the console of the Planetarium's projection system. Directly behind her is the North Star. Circles are the trails of stars orbiting around the North Star.

FLANDRAU PLANETARIUM

In the theater's 50-foot dome the appearance of the night sky from any location on Earth at almost any time during the past, present, or future.

All of this hardware, Norton pointed out, is focused on one primary task: “To illustrate a phenomenon that by word of mouth alone would be very difficult to understand.” For example, how does one explain the mysterious phenomenon called a Black Hole? No one has ever seen a Black Hole. Norton explained: “We've observed Black Holes indirectly, but how do you deal with it when you're trying to tell someone about it? How could we visualize this in a planetarium as though you were right next to it? The universe is not built on the same time scale as you and I are built on...things happen slowly, so slowly that you and I don't livè 'long enough to see it happen; but of course in the planetarium we can speed up time; we have control of time. By use of the instruments and special effects we can make a moment go by so rapidly that we can see things happen that we normally wouldn't.

“So let's say we wanted to illustrate the concept of a Black Hole. The Black Holes that we have discovered are members of a double star system, and the only way we can detect the existence of a Black Hole is because a Black Hole gives off X-ray radiation. But you see, if you put your eye to the telescope or took a picture, all you'd see is the bright star and nothing else. A satellite in orbit around the earth will pick up the X-rays for us, and that's it. But how do we give people a visualization of what's really going on?

“You do it by speeding up the system with the projector. The same applies to the evolution of the sun. What is going to happen to the sun in the future? What happened to the sun in the past? We can go through 10 and 15 billion years of the sun's evolution in a matter of a few minutes if we wished to. It's something we can't observe because we don't live in the same time frame, but by means of this unique motion picture that we have, as well as all of these special projection effects, we can compress time, and we can make it happen the way we think it's going to happen before our eyes.” In every astronomer there is the seed of a poet, and many others, like Norton, become more intense and spirited as they navigate their thoughts through cosmic images that seem inexplicable to the average person. The Flandrau Planetarium assumes a fortuitous position: because it is in Southern Arizona, in the center of an area that seems to have its own gravitational pull for other astronomers, it offers the public a pool of eminent and enthusiastic volunteers who in effect provide footnotes to the programmed materials and exhibits in the halls.

A case in point: every night except Mondays, the planetarium's 16-inch Cassegrain reflecting telescope is open for public use, and on each of those nights a different volunteer is at the scope to assist visitors. There's no telling who will be there when you arrive, but it could very possibly be Ewen A. Whitaker's turn.

If it is, and the moon happens to be out, the visitor has the opportunity to ask questions of the man who made it possible for the astronauts to bring back samples of the moon's rocks. Whitaker, who began his astronomical studies at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, came to the United States in 1958 at the invitation of Gerard P. Kuiper, and with Kuiper produced the first photo atlas of the moon. “It was really just a collection of photographs printed and put out in atlas form, but it was a start,” he said with considerable modesty.Kuiper and Whitaker came to the University of Arizona from the University of Chicago in 1960. Prior to Kuiper's death in 1973, the two worked intimately on the lunar projects of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

It was Whitaker who, in 1969, took a dime store magnifying glass and started examining the panoramic photographs of the moon the government had given him in an attempt to locate Surveyor 3, sent to the moon 31 months earlier. He had very few clues to go on, but knew through NASA that Surveyor had landed somewhere in a three-square-mile area in the southeastern corner of the Ocean of Storms. From the pictures Surveyor transmitted, they also knew it was standing in a crater about 100 yards wide. “Unfortunately,” reported Time magazine in 1969, “there were about 1000 craters of that size within the probable landing area.” Examining photographs taken by the spacecraft's television camera from just five feet off the moon's surface, Whitaker saw large rocks inside Surveyor's crater. Next, he noticed that the rocks and two small craters on the floor of the larger crater were aligned along an imaginary line pointing directly north. “That's all we had to go on, really,” Whitaker said. “We had no way of telling the size of these landmarks or the distance between them.”Nevertheless, with his dime store magnifying glass, he was able to locate the distinctive boulder and crater pattern on the Ocean of Storms and to advise NASA so that, when the Apollo 12 astronauts landed, they were within walking distance of Surveyor, which was precisely where Whitaker determined it would be.

If Whitaker is manning the telescope when a visitor comes to the Flandrau Planetarium, he will answer questions candidly and with authority and, often, with a tinge of humor. Is he comfortable talking about the moon? “Oh yes,” he laughs, “I've been looking at the darn thing since 1950. It's almost like a map of the Earth to me.” All of the volunteers at the Flandrau Planetarium are, of course, interested in astronomy, but their fields of interest are as varied as their personalities. David Levy is a 35-year-old amateur astronomer living in the desert with two cats and 65 telescopes.

FLANDRAU PLANETARIUM

His telescopes are everywhere. Three are in the laundry room; two, mere playthings, clutter the bathroom. Another hangs in the kitchen. Telescopes line the living room and surround his bed. Three are permanently mounted in his backyard. One friend calls the place "David Levy's Home for Wayward Telescopes."

A volunteer who often participates in the planetarium's elementary school programs, Levy also does programs for adults. These programs may focus on two or three different areas. He could talk about his personal interest in astronomy: "It's a plain fact that I probably do more observing than anyone else I know. I have been watching the movement of variable stars, to see how they change in brightness, since I was 12 years old."

Or, he can talk about his principal preoccupation, the constellation of Orion, the hunter: "There are three bright stars in the middle of the belt of Orion," he said. "Just below the belt, there is a sword. In the middle of the sword, there is a gas cloud. This gas cloud is a nursery. One of the elementary school kids called it a nest. New stars are formed in that gas cloud. I have a detailed chart of the stars in that cloud. I've been watching them so long that I know them intimately. I can detect the slightest change. I know them almost like people."

Brian Sullivan has almost the same feelings toward spacecraft. Sullivan is a graphic artist at the planetarium. He builds models of spacecraft-often using NASA's blueprints-and then photographs the models, which are then projected on to the planetarium dome. Sullivan remembers, to the hour, the day he became hooked on space adventures: "It was October 20, 1968, 2:30 in the afternoon. My father took me to see the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. One Brian Sullivan went into that movie, but a different Brian Sullivan came out. I was hooked, just blown away...."

The models that Sullivan builds and photographs for the planetarium are not imaginative playthings, though the materials used to construct them seem to come from a fanciful imagination. He explained his job this way: "What we do is come down with an idea that we need a space station or some futuristic spacecraft. Well, there are a lot of plans that NASA has on the drawing boards, so I'll research those, and then I'll start sketching out various designs on an art tablet, and as I'm doing that I'll be thinking of what shapes and things I can use for fuel tanks, for man modules, for landers, and stuff like that.

"I've been doing this for so long that I have in the back of my head a catalog for different parts, what model kits to buy; so I may buy, say, two tank kits and about seven space shuttle kits, and I just take a piece from here and a piece from there and put them together." He stresses that his models must be scientifically accurate.

"I have to keep pretty consistent with the science end of things. These ships that you see in Star Wars today, the Millenium Falcon, the X-wing Fighter, and such-that stuff is on the ridiculous side. I mean, they're a lot of fun, but it's all bad science."

Being scientifically accurate evidently does not mean he must employ scientific equipment. Not long ago, Sullivan was having a problem coming up with a man module for a starship.

"It kept gnawing away at me. I needed that part. I was thinking about it while I was out having lunch, and suddenly there it was, right under my nose-the coleslaw container."

Like his boss, O. Richard Norton, Sullivan was astonished. Also pleased: it had been a productive lunch hour.

Sam Negri, a feature writer for the Arizona Republic, has published articles, essays, and poetry in a variety of publications including The New York Times, The New York Quarterly, and theYale Alumni Magazine.

Additional Reading: The Planetarium and Atmospherium: An Indoor Universe, by O. Richard Norton, Naturgraph Publishers, Healdsburg, California, 1968.

Stars, by Herbert S. Zim and Robert H. Baker, Golden Press, New York, New York, 1956.

Stars: A New Way to see Them, by Hans Augusto Ray, Houghton-Miflin, Boston, Massachusetts, 1976.

ARIZONIQUES

Being something of an almanac... a sampler...a calendar...and a guide to places, events, and people unique to Arizona and the Southwest.

ARIZONA, FIVE YEARS WITHOUT A FLAG

On Valentine's Day, February 14, 1912, Arizona became the 48th state in the Union. But it took Arizona citizens five years to decide on an official state flag to fly over the Valentine state. Various factions proposed several designs including banners bearing the state seal, a Gila monster, or an eagle. The flag finally accepted has 13 rays, a copper star, and a dark blue lower half, all relating to the American flag. But the elements also represent Arizona. The star symbolizes Arizona's copper industry; the rays, the state's abundant sunshine; the red and yellow colors, New Spain's (Mexico's) flag that once flew over the area; and blue and yellow, the state's colors.Citizens criticized the design as they felt it too closely resembled the Japanese flag. But after much debate, the bill proclaiming the state flag barely passed both houses of the 1917 Arizona State legislature and landed on Governor Tom Campbell's desk where it went unsigned for five days until it automatically became law.

Scottsdale's Parada Del Sol

Scottsdale, the "West's Most Western Town," lives up to its reputation once again during the annual Parada Del Sol (Parade of the Sun) Rodeo. Top rodeo cowboys compete in all the action-filled events at the rodeo February 2-5, but there's a whole month of Wild West activities leading up to the rodeo. The four Saturdays prior to the Parada feature make-believe shoot-outs, dances, and Western fashion shows in downtown Scottsdale. And then of course there's the Parada, the world's largest horse-drawn parade, and one of the top 100 spectator events in North America. For more information contact the Scottsdale Jaycees, P.O. Box 292, Scottsdale, AZ 85252 (602) 990-3179.

February 2-6, Quartzsite Pow-Wow Gem and Mineral Show. The town of Quartzsite turns into a gigantic campground as more than a million rockhounds flock to the world's largest gem and mineral show. (602) 927-6325 February 10-12, Wickenburg: Gold Rush Days. Rodeos, a parade, horse and mule races, a mock hanging, melodramas, country/western and square dancing, and gospel music on Sunday. (602) 684-5479 February 17-19 Casa Grande: O'Odham Tash (Indian Days) and Rodeo. More than 100,000 Indians from nearly every North American tribe and non-Indians gather for the world's largest all-Indian rodeo, and a weekend filled with arts and crafts, ceremonials, dances, costumes, games and races, parades, barbeque, concert, and more. (602) 836-2125 February 18-19, Alpine Winter Carnival. Cross-country ski, dog sled, children's downhill sled, and Telemark slalom races, plus an ice sculpture contest. (602) 339-4450 or 339-4574.

From 1960 to 1977 Arizona gas fields yielded the richest concentration of helium known to man. Helium, commonly found in amounts of less than one percent in natural gas deposits, occurred in eight to 10 percent concentrations with nitrogen gas in the Pinta Dome, Navajo Springs, and East Navajo Springs gas fields near Holbrook, in northeastern Arizona. The world's largest deposits of helium are found in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming, but the extraction of the gas there is more expensive than in Arizona because of the low concentration.

Best known for its lifting properties seen in children's balloons and dirigibles such as the Goodyear Blimp, helium is actually used primarily in scientific and engineering applications.

SOUTHWEST SAMPLER

Tumbleweeds rolling before the wind across the deserts and plains of Arizona came to the United States by accident in 1873. Seeds of the Salsola, or Russian thistle, got mixed in with a shipment of European flax seed. They took root and quickly spread over the American West, becoming a symbol for the foot-loose vagabond in the land of wide open spaces.

What State has the largest capital? Arizona, of course. Phoenix, with a 1984 population of 900,000 within the city limits, is the ninthlargest city in the United States, and the largest U.S. state capital. Montpelier, Vermont, is the smallest capital with a population of 8200.

In the Phoenix area in 1914, ostriches were big business. There were at least 6000 of the big birds on ranches in the Salt River Valley-more ostriches in captivity than anywhere else in the world.

Their feathers adorned hats and boas which swept the fashion world. But fashions being fickle, by the 1930s not an ostrich could be found in Arizona.

Believe it! Coyotes and badgers occasionally hunt as a team. The badger frightens rodents from their burrows for the waiting coyote who then shares the catch with the badger.

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, west of Tucson, labels itself "A Living Museum," but that's an understatement for an institution that exhibits and explains nearly every aspect of life in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Living in environments similar to their natural habitats, 200 species of native animals, including such rare examples as the endangered Mexican wolf, call the museum home. In addition to the animals, the Museum also features the Stephen H. Congdon Earth Sciences Center where visitors can explore a realistic man-made cave as the geological story of the Sonoran Desert unfolds before them. And in a desert botanical display, the museum includes native plants lining the walkways through the grounds. This respected museum, accredited by both the American Association of Museums, and the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, is a must for anyone who wants to really understand the desert, its life, and origins. For more information contact the museum at Route 9, Box 900, Tucson, AZ 85704 (602) 883-1380.

CLIFTON'S FIRST CALABOOSE

It's 1878, and the copper mining boom town of Clifton needs a jail. The rowdy miners and cowboys occasionally get out of hand and law-abiding citizens have no place to hold them until they cool off. So the Lesinsky brothers, owners of the mines, let a contract for the building of a jail. It is decided a hole will be blasted into a solid rock cliff, and an iron door installed to keep the prisoners secure in the cave-prison.

Margarito Barela wins the contract to build the jail because the job pays so poorly no one else bids on the contract. Another reason may be none of the miners wants a jail anywhere near Clifton. So Margarito blasts the hole, installs the iron door, and makes a secure, escape-proof jail.

So pleased is he with his work he invests all his earnings in mescal, a potent drink made from cactus. After consuming his investment, Margarito celebrates a job well done by shooting holes in the ceiling of Hovey's Dance Hall. He is arrested and becomes the first prisoner in his own jail.

On the opposite page are only a few of the fascinating events scheduled this month in Arizona. For a more complete calendar please write: Arizona Office of Tourism, 3507 North Central Avenue, Department CE, Suite 506, Phoenix, AZ 85012