A Geodesium Meetup With Alan Parsons

Posted on 24 February 2020 by Mark C. Petersen

Celestial Rhythms: NYC Live '85 albumAs a musician, the “Celestial Rhythms” concert — performed at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium in May 1985 — was a special event. Meeting up with the noted science fiction author Dr. Isaac Asimov made it an even more memorable experience for both Carolyn and me. We’d been avid readers for decades.

Asimov was a friend of the Hayden Planetarium. After the concert, he gave the keynote lecture at the banquet of the Middle Atlantic Planetarium Society convention, being held at Hayden at the same time. We knew in advance The Good Doctor would be in attendance at our concert. So I prepared an arrangement of I Robot, the title track of the Alan Parsons Project album, for us to play. This was to be the encore of the concert. I dedicated it to Asimov, sitting in the audience. That performance is now immortalized on the Geodesium album, Celestial Rhythms: NYC Live ’85.

I thought that someday, if I ever got a chance to meet Alan Parsons, I’d tell him about that special night, when I’d actually gotten to play I Robot — for “I, Robot” author, Asimov!

It only took 35 years… but that time finally came in February 2020, at a meet-and-greet event before an Alan Parsons Live Project concert in Denver. Another memorable experience — finally getting to meet someone who has provided a soundtrack for our lives, whose work has inspired a lifetime of music-making.

Carolyn, Alan, Mark

Alan Parsons gets the Celestial Rhythms: NYC Live ’85 album from Carolyn and Mark Petersen.

I got to ask Alan if he had ever met or talked with Asimov; he replied “Eric (Woolfson) did.” I told him how I’d recorded his piece as an encore, and made a verbal dedication to Asimov during our performance. And I presented Alan with the Celestial Rhythms: NYC Live ’85 CD. He graciously asked me to autograph it for him, which I was honored to do.

And as they say, “Pics or it didn’t happen…”, so here’s the proof, with Carolyn as my witness!

Posted in General, Geodesium, Other LNP projects, Soundtracks | 2 Comments

Losing the Dark to Light Pollution

Posted on 13 June 2016 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Help Educate your Audiences about Light Pollution

Losing the Dark posterWe’re losing sight of the Milky Way, due to light pollution. Those of us in the planetarium community know this innately. So do astronomers, outdoors enthusiasts and others who appreciate the night sky.

There’s now some verifiable scientific evidence for the amount of light pollution out there. The folks at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science put together a study of light pollution and its effects on night sky visibility. They used high-resolution satellite data and precision sky brightness measurements. What they came up with is the most accurate assessment yet of the world-wide impact of light pollution. Their report is called The New World Atlas of Artificial Sky Brightness. It shows where the skies are brightest due to unnecessary or unwise use of lights at night. It’s a call to action, or at least a call to do some serious thinking about how we light up our cities, towns, and countryside.

Educating the Public through Dome Exposure

Most of you know that we at Loch Ness Productions have long advocated mitigating light pollution. Since we now live in an area with reasonably dark skies, we’re among the lucky ones who CAN see the Milky Way at night. We think more people should be able to do so, too.

That’s why we got involved with the International Dark-Sky Association some years ago. In 2013, the group asked us to make a video about light pollution. The result is Losing the Dark. It’s available as a free download in both fulldome and flat-screen formats. Many fulldome theaters have it, and we hear all the time about how the flat-screen version is used in public policy and education presentations.

As the story about the loss of the Milky Way percolates through the public consciousness, please feel free to use this video to help facilitate the conversation with your audiences. It’s available in 17 languages and is a powerful way to educate our audiences about the creeping effects of light pollution.

 

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Incoming! Bring Impacts to your Dome!

Posted on 5 May 2016 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

The poster for "Incoming!"We’re excited to bring you the latest fulldome show from the California Academy of Sciences Morrison Planetarium: Incoming! It’s a hard-hitting look at how collisions have shaped our planet.

This original show explores the history of bombardment throughout the solar system, but particularly on Earth. There hasn’t been a time in our planet’s history when it wasn’t a target for something coming in from outer space. It was a major target throughout its formation, through a period called the Late Heavy Bombardment (which ended about 3.8 billion years ago).

Accretion and bombardment are how our planet grew, but impacts also affected our planet’s early atmosphere, and water-rich asteroids may have contributed to the buildup of Earth’s oceans. At least one major impact is thought to have contributed to the conditions that wiped out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. So, it’s understandable that humans are VERY interested in knowing what else is “out there” posing a threat to our planet and our lives.

Bringing Incoming! To Life

Incoming! is narrated by acclaimed actor George Takei (best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the Star Trek franchise, and his work on the stage, including the recent play Allegiance). In a press interview for the original opening, show writer-director Ryan Wyatt suggested that Mr. Takei’s familiar voice helps deliver somewhat frightening news in a way that reassures viewers.

Of course, no California Academy show would be complete without cutting-edge visualizations. In this show, they bring real-time data from current NASA missions to explain how collisions have shaped our world and others. This includes a look at the Chelyabinsk event of 2013 and the path the asteroid took as it encountered our planet.

Incoming shows near-Earth objects that cross our orbitRecent discoveries of near-Earth objects (NEOs) “out there” cut a little TOO close to our planet. News of the Chelyabinsk fireball brought fears of planetary catastrophe home in a very visceral way. These appear in our skies frequently, although most of them are caused by rocks that are too small to do much damage when they hit the surface. As members of the public share their fear of cosmic catastrophes based on these events, this show can help worried planetarians answer some of those queries.

Assessing the Risks

Today, groups ranging from NASA scientists to private foundations are busily observing NEOs. Their data helps assess what dangers are posed.

Meteoroids and asteroid chunks aren’t the only things that slam into the surfaces of solar system worlds. Comets leave behind evidence of their passage through the solar system that eventually finds its way to Earth as meteors. But, they can also be impactors themselves, as we’ve seen numerous comets hit Jupiter or disappear into the Sun.

The concept of debris raining down on Earth is not always a comfortable one to consider. Most material that makes it through our atmosphere doesn’t pose much of a risk. But, there ARE objects out there that do. The more we know about them, the better prepared we are to figure out ways to deal with the monster impactors that come along every so often. Once your audiences have seen this show, they’ll come away with a much better understanding of the role of impacts on Earth—and elsewhere in the solar system.

Check out Incoming! and see if it’s right for you!

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