Many people do not know what a planetarium is. Since this disappointing fact is even true for well-educated people, including students and teachers, many pupils will never hear about planetariums. In order to spread knowledge about planetariums, universities can play a major role. One of the best ways is to visit a planetarium with students, especially those who will become teachers. Such a visit is a very efficient multiplying factor.

But in order to make a planetarium visit efficient, one should not go unprepared. We therefore go with education students who are enrolled in an astronomy course. Before their visit, we inform them about what a planetarium is and about how it is used. We teach them, for example, specific terms of the rotating sky, its coordinates, and the significance of the ecliptic and of retrograde loops. And of course, we teach the students how the sky appears from different latitudes, including the equator and the southern hemisphere. We also teach the technical aspects of how the projector works.

It is important to add that in addition to the general public and all the students and teachers involved in school systems, the planetarium community in general tries also to reach some special groups of the public. The groups could be those with hearing problems, those who have never seen any stars (the visually handicapped), amateur astronomy groups, and even gifted students.

As you can imagine, these special groups represent a very small fraction of our attendance at the planetarium but they need special treatment, and for that reason many planeteria around the world have at one time or another prepared a unique program in the star theater for them, built new and special exhibits, or given technical tours of their installations.

The planetarium was invented by the German engineer Walther Bauersfeld of the Carl Zeiss Company in 1919, and the first projection-planetarium in the world was installed in the Deutsches Museum in München (Munich) 1923. Most of the German planetariums were destroyed during World War II. Today, nine major planetariums with dome diameters greater than 15m are in operation in the following cities in F.R. Germany; the numbers in brackets are the year of opening, the dome size and the seating capacity: West Berlin (1965; 20 m; 320), Bochum (1964; 20 m; 300), Hamburg (1933; 20.6 m; 270), Mannheim (1984; 20 m; 287), München (1925; 15 m; 156), Münster (1981; 20 m; 280), Nürnberg (1961; 18 m; 255), Stuttgart (1977; 20 m; 277), and Wolfsburg (1983; 15 m; 148).

The sales promotion of the planetarium is a marketing problem. Program arrangements must take this into account. Marketing is not exclusively a tool to obtain a maximum profit: marketing methods can control the exchange problems between the public and the nonprofit planetarium. The planetarium produces a service. This service must be distributed to the public. The public must know that the planetarium distributes a special service.

The public visits the planetarium during leisure time. (One exception — the school classes — is not considered here.) Therefore one marketing problem of the planetarium is to sell its service as recreational value.

The leisure time activities of the public can be divided into 10 categories. These categories contain the basic patterns and needs of the public. The content of the public planetarium performances must try to cover the leisure-time categories. The communication windows of the public can only be reached by simplifying astronomical facts.

It is desirable that planetariums in developing countries should make the maximum and most efficient use of the planetarium infrastructure and facilities to cover as much ground as possible in the popularization and dissemination of astronomy. After all, the number of planetariums in developing countries necessarily has to be small, and so specialization in specific disciplines or fields becomes a luxury. In India, for example, there are about ten planetariums, and another five or six will come into operation in the next few years. But these planetariums have to cater to a large population. In the U.S.A., which has a fraction of India’s population, on the other hand, there are hundreds of planetariums. The following suggestions are based on successfully implemented projects at the B.M. Birla Planetarium, Hyderabad.

A golden rule for planetarium programs anywhere, and certainly in developing countries, is to start a planetarium sky show or activity with a local flair. For example, the local names of stars and constellations, local myths, local astronomers or, more specifically, topics like the history of astronomy in the region should be highlighted.

Planetariums around the world attract millions of adults and children each year to public programs popularizing astronomy and related topics. For many urban school children, the planetarium experience is a unique opportunity to observe and to wonder about the night sky and objects in space. In particular, the planetarium provides children with a needed observational basis for increasing scientific literacy and for understanding astronomical concepts.

This paper explores the role of the planetarium in the astronomy education of school children, grades Kindergarten–12, in Tucson, Arizona, over the past 12 years.

Before coming to West Virginia, I worked for Delaware-Chenango BOCES as their telelearning coordinator. BOCES stands for “Board of Cooperative Educational Services.” Such organizations exist throughout New York State for the purpose of pooling resources of school systems and providing services and equipment they might be unable to afford on their own. Examples of the services they provide include distance learning, vocational education, computer services, etc. Our BOCES owned a portable Starlab planetarium for loan to member school districts.

Carol Kwiencinski, from Downsville Central School in Downsville, New York, used the portable planetarium with her students. Her students asked her many questions she could not answer, particularly about black holes. As an add-on to her planetarium session, she approached me to do a teleconference with a planetarium director, Mitch Luman of the Koch Planetarium and Science Center, Evansville, Indiana. To set up the conference, we used a speakerphone, which is basically a set of amplifiers and microphones that allow students to speak and listen to a telephone conversation as a group.

The introductory course in astronomy intended for non-majors is taken by about 150 students per semester at Kutztown University. This institution is fortunate in having a planetarium, which is used extensively both in course work in astronomy and with visiting school groups. The projector is a Spitz model A3P, the dome is of perforated aluminum and has a diameter of 10.5 meters, and the seating capacity of the planetarium is about 120. The introductory astronomy course at Kutztown consists of two hours of lectures and a two-hour laboratory session per week. There are five or six laboratory sections, each of which contains about 25-30 students.

Studies of the skies have dominated intellectual activities since ancient man. In this respect, India has a very long tradition of such recorded activity, covering the observations of celestial bodies both as a science and as mythology (Gurm, 1980). The first half of the Christian era witnessed the evolution of spherical astronomy as a part of the study of mathematics (algebra and trigonometry) and its application to astrology. The evolution of spherical astronomy culminated in the concrete manifestation in the northern parts of India in the form of Jantar-Mantars by Raja Jai Singh (Mayer, 1979) in the early eighteenth century. Interestingly, spherical astronomy remained one of the most important activities in the study of astronomy during the British period too. Some of the older treatises on this subject during the nineteenth century were written in the Offices of the Survey of India.

Modern astronomy started in India when an astronomical observatory was founded in Madras as early as 1786 by the East India Company and to which the Indian Institute of Astrophysics traces its origin. There are, however, records of astronomical observations taken through a telescope from Pondicherry that elucidate the double-star nature of Alpha-Centauri as early as in 1689. Since then many more research centers in astronomy have been established. Today, institutions like the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (Bangalore), the Raman Research Institute (Bangalore), the Center of Advanced Study in Astronomy (Hyderabad), the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Bombay), and the Physical Research Laboratory (Ahmedabad) are engaged in pioneering work in theoretical and observational branches of astronomy and astrophysics.

Dr. M.F. Ingham, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, U.K., reported on the work of Professor V.G. Kulkarni and his colleagues at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, none of whom could attend this meeting. They are preparing some excellent material for teaching elementary astronomy in village primary schools in India. The text of Dr. Ingham’s paper was not provided to us, but we have included, below, some of the discussion which followed this interesting paper. Further information can be obtained from Professor V.G. Kulkarni, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, Homi Bhabha Road, Bombay 400 005, India — Editors.

The recent astronomy of the Arab countries began by the last decade of the 19th century in Alger and the first decade of the 20th century in Helwan. Two Arab countries have been members of the IAU, namely Egypt (since 1925) and Iraq (since 1976). Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Morocco became members in 1988. We restrict ourselves here to the teaching and popularizing of astronomy.

In Egypt there is a single department of astronomy; since 1937 it has belonged to the Faculty of Science of Cairo University. A B.Sc. in astronomy requires two years’ study of mathematics and physics followed by two more years devoted mainly to astronomy, including a small project. Elementary courses for other sciences, such as geography and geophysics, are also taught at Cairo University and the American University in Cairo.

About 300 years ago in Lopburi and Ayudhaya, many astronomical observatories were designed, constructed, and supported by the Roman Catholic missionaries from Europe and by King Narai the Great of Siam (Thailand). The interesting recorded history of Thai astronomy was found in the national museum of France a few years ago. Afterwards, the ruined observatories were searched for and found. A tercentennial commemorative ceremony of Thai astronomy was held on April 30, 1988.

The French emissary and the Roman Catholic missionaries in the reign of King Louis XIV first visited Thailand in 1685. Besides intending to spread the Catholic religion, they carried out research on surveying local and celestial positions. A Thai royal astrologer calculated and predicted a total lunar eclipse on December 11, 1685. King Narai, together with the missionaries, observed the eclipse at Lopburi through a telescope having magnification of 30 to 72. A partial solar eclipse was also observed near the same place on April 30, 1688. Sanpaolo, a Catholic church on the outskirts of Lopburi, was the site of the first astronomical observatory in Thailand, built in 1685. Another observatory in Lopburi, built in the house of a Persian emissary, later became a Thai temple. Other astronomical observatories were supposedly built in Ayudhaya, the capital of Thailand in King Narai’s period, and should be worthy of search and restoration. However, the historical events on record have not yet been clearly found out.

Sometimes we may ask ourselves how can astronomy, a science with apparently few points of contact with technology or industrial production, help the economic development of people?

My paper is an account of an experiment undertaken in Uruguay on the teaching of astronomy in secondary schools. We seek to show how astronomy may contribute to the development of nations that, like Uruguay, need to create their own technologies to overcome their economic backwardness.

Though the introduction of astronomy in the secondary education curriculum in Uruguay dates back to 1889, in 1986 the Educational Supervisory Office made a radically different proposal for the methodological and programmatic orientation of astronomy teaching. The proposed goal is clear: the teaching of astronomy in secondary education should be geared not to train technicians but to create a scientific-minded youth. It is not important if later, in their university studies, these young people go into medicine, engineering, or economics; the important thing is a reevaluation of sciences in the eyes of adolescents, who often slide along the comfortable slope of certain humanistic areas, in which they wind up by the process of elimination. (One often hears the argument, “I’m studying law because it doesn’t have mathematics.”) Further, above all those considerations, the most important thing is to create thinking minds, the minds of free people.

ISYA typically last about three weeks and attract roughly twenty students at the Master of Science level. About half the students are from the host country, the others from neighboring countries. ISYA are initiated by astronomically developing countries and have been held in Venezuela, Nigeria, Egypt, Portugal, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, China, and others. Two or three central topics are chosen. For each topic, a suitable faculty member is invited to stay for the entire school. Other topics appear for enrichment and are chosen according to local expertise and availability of other visitors. The IAU provides the prestige of an international venture and seeks to garner local support not only for the ISYA but also for the longer-term increase in local astronomical capabilities. Financial support is provided both locally and by the IAU, when possible ultimately from UNESCO. Perhaps the greatest benefits of an ISYA are the resulting lasting acquaintances and scientific cooperations.

Professors and students of San Marcos University (USM) have found that the Visiting Lecturers Program (VLP) of the IAU has helped to improve the study of astronomy in Peru. The Peruvian people and I are profoundly grateful.

The VLP and the International Schools for Young Astronomers (ISYA) advised us, pointing our perspectives and capacity for work in the correct direction. I feel that both the VLP and the ISYA are noble expressions of the universal message of scientific collaboration, and are the voices of the highest altruism of the astronomers who participate in them.

With reference to the VLP, the state of astronomy education can be described in three parts:

Starting on the 10th of June, 1986, the staid and quiet halls and courtyard and corridors, including the giant circular staircase designed by Bernini for the little donkeys that carried Popes to their quarters in the summer palace, echoed to the swift patter of lightfooted students and the buzz of their conversations as 17 young men and 8 young women met at the first Vatican Observatory Summer School in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Castel Gandolfo.

These 25 scholars had been chosen from a list of 135 candidates at university and graduate school campuses all over this planet. More than 30 candidates were rejected for “excellence”; they were judged to be too far advanced for admission to the classes on Galaxies and Dark Matter and to those on Spectral Classification and on Instrumentation for Photometry and Image Processing. The classes were aimed at students just beginning or planning immediate entrance into graduate level classes; the School was not planned for “new Ph.D.s,” for “post-docs,” or for those already well into thesis work. Criteria for admission included academic grades, recommendations of university professors, plus personal statements from the candidates on reasons why they felt they wanted to attend the sessions of the school. Applications were studied by faculty and staff members and results were announced in January, giving students some four months to arrange their travel and home commitments so they could be free to respond to the school bells on June 10.

We wish to report briefly on a program for sending donated astronomical books and journals to overseas institutions that have not been able to acquire them in other ways. The program is being sponsored for a trial year by the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA), in co-operation with the Canadian Organization for Development through Education (CODE), which has generously offered to pay for the shipments to some countries, mostly in Africa and the Caribbean.

We have been soliciting donations from among the membership of CASCA for materials surplus to their needs, and have offered these through the Newsletter of IAU Commission 46, the IAU Bulletin, and Colloquium 105. Our efforts have been successful, and at the time of writing, about half the journal runs and texts, and almost all of the monographs available at the time of the Colloquium have found recipients. We are gratified by this result, as we had been unsure of the usefulness of what we were doing. Discussions at the Colloquium have given us additional reassurance in this regard.