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OSCAR ALVAREZ/Daily Bruin Students lined up to see the planets from telescopes on the roof of Math Sciences Wednesday. June 12 will be the last planetarium show of the school year.

By Wendy Su

Daily Bruin Contributor

wsu@media.ucla.edu

The small planetarium with its white dome top was packed with 45 people in the audience.

In the middle of the dome was a long, black sky projector from the 1970s when the planetarium was purchased, said Matthew Barczys, a graduate student in astronomy who led the show.

The room was dark except for a few pink lights in one of the corners. Pinpoints of light came out from every direction of the projector, showing up as stars on the top of the dome. After the show, the Los Angeles sky was still foggy, in stark contrast to the brightly lit stars inside the planetarium.

An undergraduate from the Astronomical Society leads the telescope viewing group to the top of the Mathematical Sciences Building.

Passing different sized telescopes on the roof, the group on this night observed the large 16-inch diameter telescope, but the telescopic viewing was through a 14-inch reflector telescope. A reflector telescope has a series of lights inside that reflect the light back to the viewer.

The larger telescopes were not used because they were not as easy to handle. But the smaller telescopes are not able to view fainter objects, said Sabrina Pakzad, a fourth-year astrophysics student and president of the Undergraduate Astronomical Society.

Most of the stars in the sky that are visible with the naked eye are within 10,000 light years, according to Barczys. To view stars farther than 10,000 light years away, bigger telescopes must be used.

Ray Kachelmeyer, a 1952 alumnus and an astronomy teaching assistant, said a lot has changed in the past 50 years.

“All the telescopes are very different from when I was here, they are all computerized now,” Kachelmeyer said. The position of the telescopes were controlled with a joystick-like controller.

The horizon was still bright with light and only Jupiter, Venus and Mars were visible in the early evening sky. At a 16-inch telescope, students gathered around computer images taken of previous planet and moon viewings.

The planetarium is open because the school wants the public to come and explore the skies, Barczys said.

“There has been more public attendance since Griffith (Observatory) closed,” Pakzad said.

The Griffith Observatory, located in Los Angeles, closed to the public this past January for an extensive three-year renovation and expansion. The UCLA planetarium is one of the few left in the area so organizers want to focus more on public outreach, Pakzad said.

Among the students was Kaz Bielinski, an alumnus who came to the viewing with his family.

“We came because our 6-year-old son is interested in space,” Bielinski said.

Shogik Oganisyan, a first-year European studies student, was at the show for her Astronomy 3 class.

This summer there are plans to add house lights to the planetarium and a computer projector to show movies and animations by astronomers, Barczys said. The white dome will be left alone because it was touched-up a few months ago.

The volunteer-run shows are viewed every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Mainly graduate students give the planetarium shows during the school year.