In my whole life, I remember visiting a planetarium only three times, twice at the Pag-asa Planetarium on Agham Road in Quezon City as part of school field trips, and once at the Griffith Observatory and Museum in Los Angeles. These planetariums were huge simulations of the night sky, brightened by an illuminating bulb to simulate day time.

At the Pag-asa Planetarium, the positions of planets,  stars, galaxies  and nebulae were fixed, but all rotated together as the holed projector cover they were projected through was moved.

At the Griffith Observatory which I visited with two of my siblings and their families in 2008, we watched a 20-minute film documentary — about the history of the universe, a simulated trip to the Sun, the Moon, and Mars, and highlights of space adventure –  that had left us feeling awed and a little more knowledgeable than before. The space museum that supported the planetarium was breath-taking, which was partially interactive.  We particularly loved the weighing scales calibrated to show how we would weigh on the moon, and on other planets.

Today, however, my daughter and I experienced a preview (three in fact) of the vast infinitely deep outer space  at a 7-meter-diameter Mobile Interactive Planetarium set up at the gym of the Diliman Preparatory School along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City.

Our view from Earth

Real live astronomers Bamm Gabriana and Rochelle Derilo asked us to note the local time on a digital clock near the horizon, toured us through tonight’s night sky,  the rising sun tomorrow, traveling up across the sky and down again towards the western horizon and sunset. They explained that the earth’s atmosphere causes the day and night illumination of the sky as the light from the sun is reflected through it.

I can only assume how this happens but I should have asked the astronomers after the preview — Why and how does the atmosphere create the day and night on planet earth? Does this happen on all planets? So many whys and hows? All the while I thought it was as simple as the earth facing the sun half of the time.

At one point, Bamm advanced the sky view to May 5, 2010.  Some of us shrieked in delight as we caught meteors streaking through the night sky. He explained that on May 5 and 6, the Eta Aquarids will peak and be radiant in the constellation Aquarius,  best viewed in the east after midnight.

Closing in at warp speed

Two planets can be seen from Metro Manila tonight — Saturn and Mars. We closed in on Mars and noted its polar cap composed of  frozen carbon dioxide. We flew in to Saturn at warp-speed and checked its thousand rings of debris and empty space,  and 7 of its 56 satellites.

Back on earth again, with a click on the remote control pointed upward, Bamm revealed the imaginary line connections that form and give the constellations their names.  We viewed the night sky with superimposed views of the constellations and their boundaries.

Turns out that on a totally dark night, the naked eye can see some 6000 satellites, planets, stars, galaxies, nebulae (3,000 or so from each hemisphere), as opposed to the claim that one can see a million stars. But beyond some of these luminous specks in the sky are galaxies and nebulae that contain millions of galaxies with billions of stars.

With another flick of a button, we see the artistic rendition of the constellations and their imaginary boundaries. More ohhs and ahhs.

AstroLOGers, not astroNOMers, would refer to aspects of our birth charts based on the position of the sun, moon and planets within these constellations at the time of our birth. AstroNOMer Bamm noted that reading palms does not make one an astroNOMer.

Orion Constellation

We closed in on the constellation Orion, the hunter of Greek mythology.  At his shoulder is the bright North Star. We recognize Orion’s Belt of three stars — Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka.  Local folk lore refers to these stars as Tatlong Maria.

Below Orion’s Belt is a vertical group of bright objects forming the Sword of Orion. One of these objects is the Orion Nebula some 1,450 light years away, where so many new stars are being born. Again we flew in closer to the nebula and were aghast at the thought of millions of stars staring back at us.

Hubble’s Deep Field

Finally, Bamm zeroed in on an area of space that scientists call the Hubble Deep Field, a tiny area which the Hubble Telescope focused on for a long time, and came up with images of galaxies and stars far beyond our vision.

January 15, 1996: One peek into a small part of the sky, one giant leap back in time. The Hubble telescope has provided mankind’s deepest, most detailed visible view of the universe.

Representing a narrow “keyhole” view stretching to the visible horizon of the universe, the Hubble Deep Field image covers a speck of the sky only about the width of a dime 75 feet away. Though the field is a very small sample of the heavens, it is considered representative of the typical distribution of galaxies in space, because the universe, statistically, looks largely the same in all directions. Gazing into this small field, Hubble uncovered a bewildering assortment of at least 1,500 galaxies at various stages of evolution.”

(Sourced from Hubblesite)

Watch a video about the Hubble Deep Field

I couldn’t resist asking: If  the most sophisticated man-made telescope was able to record how far reaches of the universe looked like billions of years go, do we have an idea of how big the universe is?

Astronomer Bamm Gabriana casually replied: “We can only speculate, but not actually say the actual size of the universe. We use the only fixed measurement that we have right now — the speed of light at, 299,000 per second — and are able to compute the approximate distance of many of the farthest objects we see. Beyond that, we can only assume.

Piqued my imagination again

The 20-minute re-introduction to astronomy inside the Diliman Prep School Mobile Interactive Planetarium pique my interest in astronomy again. It inspired me to record this most memorable experience here on my 365 Stories blog, with some online research on the bits of facts I learned, and photos of space (in place of the blurry ones that I tried to take with my smartphone) to link my story to.

“Astronomy is the starting point  for most youngsters to get interested in Math, Physics, Chemistry, the earth sciences and the environment,” says  Bernard Llaguno, a professor at the Philippine Science High School who heard about the mobile planetarium’s  launch and wanted to see how his students can experience it too.

Outside the planetarium in the Diliman Prep gym, almost a hundred other people waited their turn to enter the planetarium. But they did not have to wait too long as time went by more rapidly with the fantastic collection of NASA space photographs taken through the Hubble telescope and several space missions, and a hands-on meteorite exhibition.

Many posed for photos with Diliman Prep president, former Senator Nikki Coseteng, or some of the astronomers, with one of two state-of-the-art telescopes (purchased by the school in January this year, in time for the annular solar eclipse on January 15 2010. I believe I wrote a blog item on this not too long ago.)

The planetarium will be on tour to various schools nationwide, starting July this year, so that more Filipinos can become interested in astronomy and the various sciences.  As Nikki Coseteng explains, more creative and scientific minds can help us Filipinos meet the growing challenges of our life on this earth, including climate change.