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Planetarium College Wide

located at the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus

Maryland, United States of America, Planet Earth around star named Sol, in the Milky Way Galaxy an out lying member of the Virgo Super Cluster around 13.7±.2 billion years after creation

Picture of Planetarium on Fenton Street

Directions to the planetarium. Astronomy is the oldest science and one of the few sciences that welcomes amateurs. Everyone who looks up at the stars with wonder is an astronomer. The planetarium is open from the last full week in August (Monday, August 20, 2007) until the Friday before Memorial day in May. This is an academic institution so there are a few holidays like Thanksgiving and around Christmas and new year's day when the entire institution is closed. All evening planetarium programs include a star party after the show, if it is clear.  Star party means we look at the sky with telescopes.  We have a 10 inch (2540mm) Meade LX200-GPS-SMT, a 3 1/2  inch (88.9mm) Questar, and a 4 1/8 inch (105mm) Edmund Astroscan telescopes that we bring outside the planetarium when clear.  Bring your telescope to the star party, and we can have even more fun sharing, the more the merrier. 
Pluto a major planet no longer; dwarf planet info "Pluto is not a Planet (1999);" "definitive?"  IAU, International  Astronomical  Union, news from XXVI General Assembly in Prague August 2006;  and NASA "Honey, I Shrunk the Solar System."   Not everyone in astronomy is happy with this IAU decision for the following reasons BBC article August 25, 2006.  Pluto Disney humor!

WHEN Free Public Planetarium SHOWS and Occasional Celestial Spectacle
Saturday, 19 July 2008 starting 2P.M. or earlier Look UP! the StarryTelling Festival in Kensington, Maryland astronomy (sun viewing in the day time and the stars and nebulae at night); Starry Telling Stories inside town hall 3710 Mitchell Street, Kensington, Maryland 20895; and Walk of the Planets up and down some street on the Side Walk in Kensington, Maryland Maps. Soon more links and other stuff. This is going to be very big. In 2009 there is the International Year of Astronomy. 
Saturday, 20  September 2008 at 7P.M. Ancient Sky Watchers of  Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras, the Maya.  The Maya had a better solar year determination (tracking of the winter solstice) than the Europeans did in 1582AD before 900AD, how did they do this? In the Planetarium.
Saturday, 25 October 2008 at 2P.M. Sundials FESTIVAL shadow casting sundials and even polarization sundials which will work when a cloud covers the sun or an half-an-hour before sunrise and half-an-hour after sunset.  In the Planetarium.  Bring a protractor, a pencil, and a manila cardboard file folder to make a sundial.
Saturday, 22  November 2008 at 7P.M. Black Holes, Gravity to the Max: or how c, G, and M make holes in the fabric of time-space (reality)!  In the Planetarium.
Saturday, 20 December 2008 at 7P.M. The Day of the Sun's Return, the Winter Solstice (the winter solstice happens around 5:02PM on Sunday, December 21, 2009, but the show is on Saturday). In the Planetarium.
Saturday, 24 January  2009 at 7P.M. How are Stars Born? not the celebrities, but the gravitational controlled thermonuclear fusion reactors that are real stars. In the Planetarium.
Saturday, 21 February 2009 at 7P.M. African Skies hear creation myths and how at least 40,000 people got their freedom using the Drinking Gourd, the Big Dipper.  In the Planetarium.
Saturday, 21 March 2009 at 7P.M. How Seeing the Stars Will Save You Money and Possibly Save Your Life (and help slow the planet earth's climate change) and Possibly Prevent Breast Cancer In the Planetarium.
Saturday, 18 April 2009 at 7P.M. Space-time Invariance and Quantum Gravity: or how c, G, and h create the fabric of time-space (reality)!  discover the smallest distances and times measurable and how the universe is pixelated. In the Planetarium.
Saturday, 2 May 2009 at 7P.M. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence discover how you can help look for ET using your computer at home and how it all is tied together. Find out about the latest information on Gleise 581 c, an exo-planet in the habitable zone around a red dwarf star that will burn on the main sequence for more than 180 billion years only 20.5 Light Years away.  In the Planetarium.
Tuesday, 21 December 2010 at 2:32A.M.
 A total Lunar Eclipse for Luna-tics starts at 2:32A.M.
Wednesday, 6 June 2012 at  5P.M.
Transit of Venus across the disk of the sun from the roof of the King Street Parking Garage.
Friday, 13 April 2029 at 8:30P.M.
View 2004MN4, now 99942 Apophis if it is clear from the roof of the King Street Parking Garage or some other high flat place in what ever down town Silver Spring has become that Montgomery College at Takoma Park/Silver Spring controls; or I can get the use of; if I am still alive and employed at the college at age 78, and there is a good chance that I will be!  B612Foundation.   Search on the Planetary Society with the word Apophis!
The planetarium shows 1,834 naked-eye stars, the Milky Way (the diffuse band of light caused by the disk of our own galaxy), and the five naked eye planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) under a twenty-four-foot dome with forty-two comfortable chairs.  The planetarium is located on Fenton Street on the Takoma Park/Silver Spring  campus of Montgomery College.  It is attached to the Science South building on the ground level and has a conspicuous silver colored domed roof. The stars are the province of all of mankind. An astrophysicist will answer questions about the universe. There is no admission charge for these public planetarium programs, but better than many that cost an admission price.  Several thousand people participated in planetarium programs last year.

Special Planetarium Programs

Planetarium shows for College Classes: 
AS, BI, CH, EL, EN, HS,  GL, MA, PH, PL, and  others in the Planetarium. 		School Teachers and youth group leaders,
Grade Specific Field Trips for Classes in the Planetarium.
Music/LASER Light Shows,
public planetarium programs not strictly astronomical in the Planetarium. 		Traveling Talks and Navigation before 1492.
for groups that can not come to the planetarium.

Summer Planetarium Programs, Special summer workshop, when the planetarium is closed to the public: like teacher workshops, courses for grade school students, and occasional special programs when something very unusual happens in the sky like the transit of Venus in the summer of 2004 and 2012 (and who knows when the next bright comet may appear).

Astronomy Courses Offered in the planetarium, The only place in the Washington Metro area to take a college astronomy course in a planetarium.  Leaning communities of Linked courses like Astrophilosophy, "Does the Universe have a philosophy?" or Astrobiology, "You are made of the Dust of Exploded Stars!"
Engineering Science Adventure Club at Montgomery College meets in the Planetarium on Friday afternoons at 3PM.
"Saturday Discovery" Planetarium Programs.  Youth programs at the College through WD&CE.
Geometric Algebra, Clifford Algebra, The Cliffhangers, special meetings for people who are mathematically minded.  Spingarn High School District of Columbia Public School, John  Buchanan's physics class presentations
High Performance Computing at Montgomery College a vision. Parkland Middle Aerospace Magnet Montgomery County Public School presentations
Astronomy, Geology, and Physics Education sites here and elsewhere.
Takoma Park Middle Montgomery County Public School  presentations.
  
Monthly Public Planetarium astronomy shows, grade specific shows for school groups, scout and other youth group programs, senior citizen and other adult group programs, monthly music/laser light shows, cultural astronomy shows (Havdalah, Whisper of Creation, Islamic Astronomy, Star of Bethlehem, and others possible) college astronomy courses, summer teacher workshops, summer youth courses, all from within a planetarium.  Right now there is a naked eye comet called 17P/Holmes in Perseus on November 7, 2007 there was a show on it.  Astronomical Christmas present recommendations what to buy for the family. 
Last updated 7:54A.M. 5/6/2008 by Dr. Harold Alden Williams, e-mail: Harold.Williams@montgomerycollege.edu   phone 240-567-1463