Word: planetarium
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...Star of Bethlehem which guided the wise men to the Child Jesus was a nova or "new star," exploding like famed Nova Herculis of 1934. Last week Professor William Henry Barton Jr. of Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History, operating the Zeiss projector in the new Hayden Planetarium, ran celestial time backward and showed how the Star might have been a planetary conjunction. In 8 B.C. Saturn, Jupiter and Mars were very close together, as the projector showed on the vault of the Planetarium dome. When the projector was run slowly forward, the three planets merged, shone brilliantly...
...planetarium idea originated in Germany and the complicated, costly ($120,000) two-ton machine which projects the celestial images is manufactured by the Carl Zeiss Optical Works at Jena. This consists of two lens-studded globes mounted on each end of a cylindrical frame eleven feet long, is shaped like a huge dumbbell, looks like the grotesque plaything of an ogre. In effect the machine is simply an extremely versatile stereopticon. It shows the stars visible to the naked eye from anywhere on Earth, about 4,500 from any one spot; the sun, the moon and its phases, the planets...
President Frederick Trubee Davison of Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History financed the planetarium building by persuading RFC to take $650,000 in Planetarium Authority bonds in return for a loan, to be paid off by millions of 25? admissions. But the RFC would not advance funds for a foreign-bought instrument. That problem was solved, to Mr. Davison's surprise and delight, when he was handed a check for $150,000 by Bachelor-Banker Hayden, who had been religiously stirred by a planetarium performance in Chicago (TIME...
When the Hayden Planetarium was opened last week, Mr. Hayden was on hand to turn over the control board keys to President Davison. "I think," said Mr. Hayden, "anything is beneficial that makes men realize that there is a much greater power in the universe than the human being on Earth, and I feel that what one sees and hears in the planetarium should make him stop, look and listen...
...Davison uttered grateful words. Presently a switch clicked in the darkened room and then was heard the sound, familiar to planetarium demonstrators, of hundreds of gasps and smothered exclamations, like the far-off murmur of surf...