Bisher, owner of Stardogs Astronomy based in Lansing, shared his astronomy expertise with students in Mr. Hoggard’s fifth-grade class. Before entering the STARLAB, students sat in a line on the gym floor as Bisher shared with them a few facts. For instance, the sun is 93 million miles from Earth, and if the sun were eight inches in diameter, the Earth would be about one-tenth of an inch in diameter.

Students entered the STARLAB one by one through a tunnel. As they entered the dome, students sat on the floor in a dimly lit space before Bisher began the presentation.

The first projection Bisher displayed on the ceiling of the dome was an image of the solar system.

“Our sun is about a million miles across, as we said,” Bisher said. “There are stars that are a lot, lot bigger than our sun. The biggest star that we know of is called Stevenson 1-21.”

News Photo by Reagan Voetberg Hinks Elementary students sit down for a presentation by Rodney Bisher in the STARLAB planetarium on Wednesday afternoon.

The students were surprised to hear this and expressed their awe.

“It’s so big that if you put it where our sun is, it would be bigger than the orbit of Saturn,” Bisher continued. “It’s about two billion miles across.”

Bisher turned off the projection and turned on a spherical lamp to represent the sun. He demonstrated to the students how the Earth orbits around the sun at a tilt, and explained how that tilt affects the seasons and the amount of daylight that we get. He also demonstrated the moon’s orbit around the Earth and how the phases of the moon are created.

Bisher explained why certain constellations cannot be seen year-round.

“As we move through space, we’re looking at a different part of the universe each night as we go farther and farther around the sun,” he said. “People don’t think about that, and that’s why the stars change. Some people have said, ‘Why can’t I see Orion in the summer?’ Well, Orion is in the winter sky. That’s the summer sky.”

Bisher prepared the fifth graders for the most exciting part of the presentation: a view of the starry night sky.

He told the students to close their eyes as he set up the projection. On the count of three, Bisher told the fifth graders to open their eyes. The students were once again awed at the display on the ceiling.

With a laser pointer, Bisher showed the audience the locations of planets and stars.

He advised students on how they can view the night sky for themselves. He suggested that they start by buying a set of binoculars over a telescope, and look at star charts on the internet or in books from the library.

Bisher explained the effects of light pollution as well.

“If you live anywhere in a city or near a city, there’s a big problem,” he said. “There’s a lot of lights in the city, and they shine up into the sky, and they make the stars disappear. That’s called light pollution.”

Bisher dimmed the lights even more to reveal what the sky looks like without light pollution. More stars became visible on the dome’s ceiling.

“Your sky changes a lot when there’s no light pollution,” he said.

Bisher changed the projection from a view of the winter night sky to the summer.

“How do we know this is a summer sky? Because when you look straight up, you’ll see one, two, three stars that make one shape,” Bisher said.

“A triangle,” the students responded.

“And running through it is a cloud that’s not a cloud at all, those are all stars that are so far away you can’t see them. That’s part of our Milky Way galaxy.”

Bisher displayed the first image of the solar system before directing students to exit the dome.

To finish their outer space experience, the fifth graders looked at the dioramas and paintings of planets and stars that Bisher had set up in the gym.

Reagan Voetberg can be reached at 989-358-5683 or rvoetberg@TheAlpenaNews.com.