New Haven Independent

The crescent moon and Venus were about the only heavenly bodies visible in New Haven’s light polluted skies. But the uncontrolled urban glare is beside the point, said said Jeffrey D. Kenney, professor and chairman of astronomy at Yale.

The 30-foot planetarium and the telescope are primarily intended to teach Yale undergrads about celestial mechanics and how to use a telescope, said Michael D. Faison (pictured), director of the Student Observatory at 355 Prospect St., and lecturer in astronomy.

Many solar system phenomena are easier to understand in graphic representations, Kenney said, such as the figure-8-shaped analemma on some globes, which shows the difference between clock time and the sun’s position over the course of a year.

The public will also get a chance to experience the planetarium and its new digital projector every Tuesday night. Some lectures, such as “Catastrofes Cosmicas” on March 3, will be given in Spanish. The planetarium will also be available to New Haven-area schools.

About 70 Yale faculty members and starry-eyed students attended the opening Thursday evening, including members of the Peabody Museum, who helped set up educational displays, and professor David Musto, honorary curator of historic scientific instruments.

The new planetarium seats 50. The star of the show is the Spitz Sci Dome HD, a digital projector (pictured), which beams computer pixels onto the company’s seamless powder-coated dome panels.

Unlike the hulking old barbell-shaped analog planetarium projectors, the new Spitz has no moving parts.

Instead, the computerized and ventilated oblong monolith tricks the eyes by rapidly switching millions of pixels on and off, just like a very precise digital projector.

Since the planetarium is digital, almost any kind of digital video can be displayed in the dome. This could include visual materials for other disciplines, such as biology and chemistry, Faison said.

Moreover, the planetarium can also display movies, such as a dramatic show on black holes narrated by the actor Liam Neeson.

Faison put together a half-hour presentation of the night sky, constellations, the planets, the Milky Way and other galaxies. He said he hopes to create more ambitious projects.

One of his first projects will be to install a New Haven skyline, projected along the dome’s circular horizon.

A smaller dome houses the university’s 16-inch Richey-Chretien telescope, which was aimed at the Orion nebula Thursday night. The instrument will be used to teach students how to guide, aim, and record images, Faison said.

Yale has access to the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona, as well as telescopes in several observatories in Chile and Argentina.

“The general problem in this country is science education in general,” Kenney said. “People are generally very inspired by astronomy. This center will excite people about science.”