Respond below with your thoughts about the Planetarium trip to UTA including several examples of what you learned by attending. You will be graded on the thoroughness of your comments and how well you can accurately convey what you have learned.
If you were unable to attend, you will receive an absence for class. To make up the assignment, attend another UTA Planetarium show anytime before February 28th and add your post by 4pm on March 1st (end of the 4th Six Weeks).
I wasn't expecting the planetarium to be so 3D! The dome shaped screen did a great job to simulate the celestial sphere. It was also really cool to see the night sky without light pollution. I learned more about the different telescopes and observatories that astronomers use. It is crazy that the JWST can withstand temperatures as cold as -446 degrees Fahrenheit! The video also expanded my perspective about global communication. More than 10 countries worked together to build that observatory and they communicated without meeting in person. I also learned that the Internet was first invented so that scientists could communicate. I never knew that! Overall, the planetarium was impressive and of great quality. I am glad that I got to go and experience outer space like never before.
ReplyDeleteThe planetarium definitely wasn't what I expected it to be; I didn't know that it would be dome shaped but that really helped make everything more life like and real looking. I get very motion sick, so I had my eyes closed most of the time to avoid throwing up but I did enjoy getting to see the night sky and getting to see all of the different consolations, asterisms, and all the planets in proportion to each other. Also I thought it was really cool when he pointed out that the one tiny pixel on the screen, blown up, holds millions and billions of stars; seeing that really reiterated for me how huge and vast the universe is. Most of the rest of the show I had a hard time watching without feeling sick but from what I heard listening to it, I thought that it was cool how the scientists recreated the conditions of what the big bang would of been like and I also thought it was really neat how, like Ellen said, the internet was originally created for scientist around the world to communicate.
ReplyDeleteThe planetarium was much more interesting than I expected it to be. I really enjoyed how in the beginning he pointed out what the sky looked like that night and the different planets and constellations that were visible. It’s very difficult to see those things on an ordinary night because of light pollution, so I really enjoyed seeing it at the planetarium. The thing I found most interesting was when the planets were all up on the screen in proportion to their real sizes. I never really thought much about the different sizes of each planet, but that visual gave me a cool perspective on each planets size. Overall it was very informative on telescopes and the different astronomers theories that created our knowledge of the universe. I really enjoyed learning about each astronomers discoveries and found the planetarium very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the dome screen and how it made everything so much easier to visualize. While we do have Starry Night to help us understand a lot of the information we learn, seeing it in 3D just made it more interesting and easier to understand. I was surprised at just how much of an impact light pollution had on the number of stars we can see at night. I knew that it had an effect on the night sky, but it is amazing how many stars are actually hidden from us. I also thought that the simulation of the Hadron Collider was very informative; I knew the basic concept already, but this visualization made me understand it in more detail. Also, I think it is very appropriate that the telescopes that go into outer space go through so much collaboration between countries. With different countries working on different parts, it encourages cooperation and mutual respect for scientific discovery around the world. In addition, I thought it was a very smart idea to create an online database of the information that the telescopes collect so that even amateurs can help sift through all the information that is retrieved from the telescopes. This must be a very useful asset for scientists who don't have enough time to look through all of the information on their own. I am excited to see some of the new images that this technology will be able to produce and the information that we will learn about our universe.
ReplyDeleteTo be completely and totally honest, I didn't expect the planetarium to be as great as it was. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of the show from the virtual roller coaster ride on Mercury to the presentation about the universe. It definitely suited my style of learning as I am a visual learner, so seeing the pictures helped make the information stick into my head longer. I mean, I knew about the spectrum, but I didn't know that scientists used different parts of the spectrum to locate different objects and activities in the night sky, like how they used gamma rays to detect explosions that occur in space and x-rays to locate black holes. There was not just the graphics, but the amazing animation that made everything feel ten times as real. I was certainly impressed with how real everything felt, from the visuals to the sounds, it all felt like we were really up in space, viewing the Earth and the Sun from a distant planet, star or galaxy. All in all, the planetarium was an amazing experience and I would have no problem visiting there again.
ReplyDeleteI was not expecting for the planetarium to be as amazing as it was. Time went by so fast and I truly did not want to leave. It is so amazing how he could control everything from his booth, from looking at our night sky, to expanding clumps of stars (such as the Subaru)so we could see and understand them. I enjoyed the beginning with him talking and showing us different things in the sky more than the actual show. It was interesting finding out little connections from the constellations to things we know; such as Subaru (the car company), and Sirius and Draco (Harry Potter characters). The video though did expand my knowledge about how astronomers from all around the world can work together. I liked seeing the model and idea for the new telescope they are planning to send in space; and it was super interesting seeing which countries contributed in making different parts of the telescope. Overall it was super cool (loved the roller coaster) and I would truly consider going back again!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the planetarium way more than I had expected! Admittedly the traffic and the drive down was a little terrible as I get lost pretty much everywhere I go, but I feel like it was well worth it by the time we got there. My favorite part was the way the presenter could manipulate the sky and take out all of the light pollution. I kind of wished that part had lasted longer! Although the part with the space-coaster was a little corny I really liked how he made connections to us not only as students learning astronomy but also as teenagers (example when he pointed out sirius and Draco, making the connections to Harry Potter). However, I really enjoyed the video as well. I felt like a lot of the information was stung we had already touched on but it went much more in depth and helped provide a visual. I found the spectrum section particularly useful because it gave me an in depth visual representation of what I know so now I visualize that model when I think about the spectrum and it helps to keep all the information straight.
ReplyDeleteI always wanted to go to University of Texas at Arlington because it is the university that I want to continue studying in for college after my high school senior year. Approaching the entrance of the planetarium I felt all my exhaustiveness narrowing down and my excitements anxiously growing.
ReplyDeleteAs I went in, everything seemed organised, modern, and awesome ! The guide tour who eventually turns out to be humorous guides us to the show. As the show starts an awesome representation as being made for presenting the spectacular three dimensional feature that the revolving screen has.
the electromagnetic spectrum seemed much convincing and enjoyable than the textbook honestly, and what was even better and to visualise is " how this all started. Seeing how the universe started from singularity through Big Bang and still expanding was simply, tremendously phenomenal. I really enjoyed attending that class in the planetarium. I had a really good experience and I wish we could go to such places for other classes and having such a nice, different experience.
The planetarium was so exciting. I definitely did not expect to walk in and find a 3D-like dome; I was thinking a planetarium was a bunch of telescopes and star diagrams, kind of like a museum but I was in for a much bigger roller coaster (ha-ha). For sure I do not think that it's a good idea for future trips to have students individually drive forty minutes to Arlington, because the traffic gets pretty bad and it's so easy for something to go wrong - especially since the duration of the presentation was shorter than the drive there and back. However, it was an awesome experience and I learned a lot of cool facts about the ways that we globally come together to explore the universe; I'm not sure what the name of that one piece of space equipment we currently are working on together, but I thought it was awesome how a ton of different countries come together to control a different part of it. It goes to show how we truly depend on one-another world-wide. I also was blown away when we looked into one section of the universe to find a billion galaxies. I never truly realized how small we are. We're smaller than a grain of dirt in this universe!
ReplyDeleteThe planetarium was very impressive and more importantly fascinating. Sitting in the auditorium and looking up at the stars without light pollution made the star gazing more real than the starry night program. I found the guide very engaging and humorous as he led us through the show. I thought that the technology used to project the image on the screen was interesting too, I kind of wanted to ask him about it but felt embarrassed! One of my favorite things that I learned was how the Harry Potter saga connected to astronomy and astrology (I wish there had been an orion too!) because it never occurred to me even though it was so obvious. Something else I learned in the presentation was how far we had come from using just our bare eyes to enormous revolving disks that don't even rely on light to find stars. Also, having achieved this much in science in only a couple thousand years, the question comes my mind, how much can we uncover in the hundreds of years to come? A third fact I picked up was how interconnected scientists are across the globe, sharing immense and profound information with each other. However among all of the great things I learned, I would have appreciated it more if I didn't feel sick while trying to keep track of the screen (like reading in the car).
ReplyDeleteThe Planetarium was really fun! My mom has taken me and my sisters to several planetarium shows in the past, so i knew a little about what to expect, but this show was much better than the ones we went to. First of all the roller coaster was of course very cool and fun! It was weird that it felt like it was real. My favorite part was actually the part in the beginning where the guide showed us the different constellations and stuff. We had already learned some of that, but I still thought it was really cool to see it in that format. The video was very interesting, especially the part about how they're trying to recreate the atmosphere of the Big Bang in the tubes underground. I also liked learning about the evolution of how scientists communicate with each other.
ReplyDeleteThe building itself was built in 1928; it was first built for viewing livestock only. I was a part of the Science Building when UT Arlington was known as North Texas Agricultural College. The building was later converted into a planetarium in 1981.It went through multiple department before becoming a part of the scientific school. According to reports in The Shorthorn, the annex was later used as a slaughterhouse until the agricultural department moved out in 1940. Administrators envisioned lectures and rehearsals there, but poor acoustics scrapped the plan. After they left it then belonged to the art department through about 1963.The art department used the room to teach students how to paint camouflage during World War 2. After the art department left, the Roundhouse was transformed into offices for the History Department. It served that purpose for several years before art Professor Bill Stegall moved in with his art printing lab. In 1975 physics Professor Ulrich Herrmann proposed that the Roundhouse become a planetarium. It took a while, but money was eventually appropriated and the planetarium opened in 1981.The original roundhouse planetarium sat around 60. It was known for the small shows and its public offerings. Since then, it has gone through renovations and technology has advanced. Now the planetarium consists of 170 seats and a state-of-the-art digital projection system with full-dome video playback, real-time 3-D computer graphics and a real-time 3-D digital astronomy package. Much more advanced than the original roundhouse planetarium!
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