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If you can't see stars of the Milky Way shining like they do in Maine (above), you can go to the Hayden Planetarium. (Tyler Nordgren) |
Bring the family
The sky is the star
The thing I miss most about living in Maine is being able to see the stars. Not the 100 to 200 stars we can see on a clear night in the Boston area but the thousands that are visible from a place where there isn't much light pollution. Unless you want to hop in the car and drive a couple of hours north, you have to visit the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Science in order to get the complete picture of the night sky - or at least the way it appeared before the electric light was invented.
OK, it's not the real thing, just images projected on a dome. But the lessons are the same. In fact, they're better, if you have a knowledgeable presenter like ours (he said his name was Chuck). The phases of the moon, our place in the Milky Way galaxy, the movements of the constellations - we take these things for granted in adulthood, but to a child they are fresh insights to be digested. My 6-year-old was a bit bored, but my 9-year-old boys sat in rapt attention throughout the 40-minute program and wanted to talk afterward about what they had learned - why some stars glow red, how the stars in Orion's belt aren't close to one another at all, how the brightest star we can see with the naked eye actually appears to be one of the dimmest, because of its distance from Earth.
It was enough to make me want to leave the museum parking garage and drive straight up to the North Woods.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
