Planetarium to show ‘The Beauty of the Visible and Invisible Night Sky’

Patrons of the monthly planetarium show will have the ability to see with x-ray vision as well as infrared and ultraviolet during “The Beauty of the Visible and Invisible Night Sky” on Monday.

The show will highlight views through different light, “you can get so much more information when you look at different wavelengths,” said planetarium director Pat Hanrahan.

“Orion it looks like a bunch of stars and then you put it in infrared, my gosh, the whole thing just lights up,” Hanrahan said.

“(Radio waves tell) us something about electric and magnetic properties; things that are spinning around give off a lot of radio waves. You can detect things like black holes,” Hanrahan explained.

Hanrahan wanted to offer a new perspective to something seen every night.

“Many things you can’t see the beauty unless you look at it in a different angle, a different light. That’s what I wanted to show. I think that some of these things are just amazing and you learn things you just wouldn’t know unless you look at them in different lights.”

Some of his favorite things to look at in the sky are the North American and Pelican nebulae.

As always, questions are encouraged at all planetarium shows. And while Hanrahan notes that more members of the Rose City Astronomer’s club are showing up, some of his best questions come from children.

“I like it, it’s really nice. It’s an honor that they’re coming here,” he said about the Rose City Astronomers.“

“My hardest questions come from the kids,” he said and then recalled a story of a first grader asking him to explain the space-time continuum.

“I get questions from college kids everyday but those school kids, they sometimes surprise me. I really love having the school kids at the shows, too, because they have a lot of enthusiasm and they do come up with some great questions sometimes.”

The planetarium show runs twice, once at 7 p.m. and once 8:15 p.m. on Feb. 4. Admission is $2 for the public and is free to students with a valid student I.D.

For more information contact Pat Hanrahan at [email protected].