If You Want to Throw a Star Party, Part 1 - Approximately 4 months out

Star Party!

The idea for the Star Party came out of the exhibit hall at TLA. The Lunar and Planetary Institute had their portable planetarium set up and my manager Julia and I went in and thought it was really awesome. We wanted to do the event at the end of SRP (it fit so well with this year’s theme!) but the planetarium was not available until the end of August. FYI- I made first contact with LPI in April after TLA and had the planetarium scheduled for our Star Party date in early May. The planetarium gets a lot of use from schools and other organizations, so you have to be flexible with your date until you get your reservation nailed down.

The email address to use for reserving the planetarium is: Education@lpi.usra.edu

Disclaimer: The planetarium is pretty big. I’m sorry I don’t have a picture! It took up most of Collier’s meeting room. So you will need some serious space (on the order of at least 11 feet of ceiling height, and about 21 feet by 21 feet floor space). This very dry YouTube video should give you an idea.

This is all the parts of the planetarium that will have to fit in your car.
I’m in there for scale.

I also noticed on their website that LPI loans exhibits to libraries, and I thought that setting one up in the foyer for the month leading up to the Star Party would be a cool way to tell people about it. Once I had the date set for the Planetarium, I requested the Molten Moon exhibit with LPI’s online request form: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/exploration/education/exhibits/.

When you request it, you’ll want to set the return date as a few days after your Star Party. You can return it along with the planetarium. It is a lot of stuff to have in your car all at once, but I have a little Corolla and it all fit.

The exhibit in transport mode.

The exhibit in display mode.

At around this time, I also looked into borrowing artifacts from NASA, but there were lots of shipping charges and some insurance requirements and I gave up. If you are interested in trying to book an astronaut to speak at your event, the request information can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/about/speakers/astronautappearances.html.

They require a written request with very detailed instructions and the request must come no more than 6 months in advance and no less than 6 weeks in advance. So I would consult with programming and submit the request when you have your date set. I have to say that the planetarium itself is pretty cool and I would not have requested an astronaut speaker officially but I happen to know one personally and he happened to be free.

- Angela Barrett