Ocean of Air, Ocean of Space

Setup

DVD: Ocean of Air, Ocean of Space in show DVD. Show DVD in input line 1 of video projector. You should see the rectangular gold button on monitor. Video projector brightness and contrast down so the audience doesn’t see the button.

Zeiss: audience faces south, Orion and Gemini at left. Stars off. Universal Projector Orion (#6) if desired.

VCR, animation DVD, XP, zoom, orrery: not used.

Spice: DVDOCEAN.CUE.

Slew (Projector R): at lines 66–69 of DVDOCEAN.CUE, slew to hard left, low on dome, speed 9:00 (slightly slower than 9:30). Leave slew on automatic. Wait for audience to enter while 89 Time 31.00 is higlighted.

CD: entrance music.

Audience entry sequence.

Show

Launch the show by aiming the DVD remote at the show DVD and pressing ENTER. After the gold rectangle disappears, video projector brightness and contrast up. Zeiss whites and blues down gradually. Planetarium entrance light off.

“Muskrat lodge”: laser point it out.

“Now 30 miles up, we’re near the top of the stratosphere and the air is really getting thin”:
Zeiss stars slowly up halfway.

“Well, although you can go pretty high in a rocket plane like that…eventually, you’ll run out of fuel and fall back to the ground”:
Zeiss stars up all the way.

“Yes…rather like a blanket”:
Zeiss stars off.

“It is a little tricky. But here’s what happens.”:
Zeiss stars on; slow diurnal motion to bring Orion to the front.
(The explanation of the seasons is the best part of the show.)

“In fact, there’s a star with a planet right there… Where? Okay, see that line of three stars there?”:
Laser point out Pollux, Orion’s belt, Betelgeuse, Rigel, Castor.
You can flash the zodiac and Universal Projector Orion.

“No, you can’t see that planet. It’s too far away to see, even with the largest telescope in the world.”:
Slow diurnal motion.

Farthest-out moment: immediately after “No…for now, Humans, and muskrats, and every other living thing known, have only one home, Earth.”

The next line: “And on that note, I guess it’s time to go back home.”:
Fade off Zeiss stars. Slew speed back to 9:30.

Ocean premiered Friday, April 20, 2007. It retired Earth & Sky, whose errors Marc hopes to correct. A big difference between Ocean and Earth & Sky is that it includes some recent topics on climate.

The script has the same narrative frame as the Woody Woodpecker cartoon in the 1950 film Destination Moon: the audience listens in as an unseen narrator leads a chattering cartoon character through outer space and back to Earth.

Ocean was written and illustrated at the Hudson River Museum by Marc Taylor, with input from other Education staff and some relevant authorities, including a climatologist at the NASA Space Studies Center by Columbia University. Narrated by DeForest Raphael, who played the Kwanzaa character in Holiday Rocket. Starring Ed Muskie.

Rebecca Kraus, who is now the manager of Youth and Family Programs (i.e. the de facto Junior Docent program Czarina) has been working on putting Teacher’s Guides to all the education department programs on the HRM website. This includes all the planetarium shows and planetarium show/workshop combos. At the earliest, these won’t be online until Fall, 2007. They don’t include scripts, but do have outlines for the shows, which for the vast majority of teachers are more useful than scripts.

The rocket plane rudders say “Muskrat” styled like the Virgin Atlantic logo. The name of the rocket plane is Glamorous Susie, after Chuck Yeager’s X–1, Glamorous Glennis, and Muskrat Susie in the song Muskrat Love.