SU President Carolyn Lepre and the faculty at the Henson School of Science and Technology cutting the ribbon for the planetarium. Image courtesy of Aydan Land.
The Henson School of Science and Technology held a grand opening for Salisbury University’s planetarium yesterday. SU President Carolyn Lepre and Henson faculty were present for a ribbon cutting ceremony and prepared a short demonstration for the afternoon.
The 10-meter planetarium was built after a $200,000 grant was given by the Richard A. Henson Foundation in June, 2023. It was built in under a week this summer by a European company called Fulldome.
“We’re entering an entirely new realm of space exploration,” Dr. Michael Scott, the dean of Henson, said before the demonstration. “The students that will be coming to Salisbury University to study astronomy and astrophysics in that planetarium will be the scientists of the future that push us on to colonizing the moon, to colonizing Mars.... Without facilities like this, it’s actually difficult for them to advance to that next step.”
Various classes at Henson are expected to start incorporating the planetarium into their lessons. Andrew King, a physics student with a concentration in astronomy, shares how his class has already used it as a tool. “Already, I’ve been in here once for class. We were covering how we measure the sky and we used it as a really nice example of how we actually do that.”
The audience entering the planetarium for the planned demonstration. Image courtesy of Aydan Land.
“...Our general-ed astronomy classes…. They’re all going to be doing labs in here rather than having a truck out, middle of the night, trying to get the telescopes to work,” Dean Scott shared, explaining how some classes will utilize the planetarium. “For the seniors, they’ve got experiments [and] they can run visualizations in here. They do a lot of work on different types of star databases…. This will allow them to actually explore that in a 360 degree space. They just couldn’t do that before.”
While a reservation is required to use the space, the planetarium isn’t exclusive to Henson students. According to Dean Scott, an artist installation in South Carolina that uses 360 degree spaces has already reached out to use the dome. “After we’re up and… we’ve got the schedule kind of figured out, we’re going to start putting it out to other people… if they want to be able to try to use the space…. They’ll work through the physics department to make that happen because primarily it’s an instructional space for physics, but I’m sure we’re gonna find other uses for it.”
Dean Scott also spoke on the other undergoing projects that the Henson school is working on. “We’ve got more investment coming in high performance computing in the next year or so. We’ve got a big server that’s gonna be upgraded. There’s a lot going on.”
The completion of the planetarium will have no effect on the construction at Blackwell Hall. The two projects are independent from each other with two separate sources of funding.
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By DAVID BOHENICK
Editor in Chief
Featured Images Courtesy of Aydan Land