The planetarium at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse has educated hundreds of thousands of visitors about deep space and the night sky for close to 60 years.
That run is ending in December when the projection room will host its final program.
The school is demolishing Cowley Hall, which houses the planetarium, as part of the next phase of construction for the Prairie Springs Science Center.
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Bob Allen has been the planetarium director across five decades, while also teaching physics and astronomy at the university.
He joined WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” to share his thoughts about the legacy of the planetarium and what he has planned for its last shows.
The following was edited for clarity and brevity.
Rob Ferrett: What is it about planetariums that is so good at not just capturing our attention, but maybe being that gateway into a love of science and astronomy?
Bob Allen: The key to me was the space race between the former Soviet Union and us in the 1960s. The federal government paid one half of any planetarium put into a school. It didn’t matter what level it was. Inner-city schools, they paid 100 percent. I’m not talking about the sound system, the audio-visual. I’m talking about the machine and the dome and the seats and the console in the room.
That opened the doors for people to go to planetariums and for people like me — who were trying to educate people about astronomy — to have a way of doing it, other than talking in a classroom.
RF: What led to this decision for UW-La Crosse to close the planetarium as part of a construction project?
BA: Back in 2011, there was a meeting at the Cleary Alumni Center here in La Crosse, and they said, in six years, we’re going to put up phase one of what is now called the Prairie Springs Science Center, where our parking lot used to be for Cowley Hall. Phase one went up exactly as planned.
There was a delay in the funding for phase two, and the construction cost in six to eight years went through the roof. They had to make some decisions about what they could do to be able to deliver the product they needed.
RF: What does it mean to you to see it going away?
BA: It does take a little piece of my heart and soul out with it. But the rationalization I use here is that I have had what we called assistants. They were planetarium assistants who could do programs on their own if I was too busy between office hours and teaching astronomy and doing programs that I could do. I’ve had several dozen student helpers over the years, and three of those actually turned into planetarium directors in Waukesha, Minneapolis and the University of Maine.
A former student of mine, Chad Wilkinson, teaches astronomy and physics and runs the planetarium at Central High School here in La Crosse. They always said, “You do public programming, and we don’t want to step on your shoes.” But for the last year, Chad has tried a couple of public programs a month, because they put some major amounts into upgrading the place, both the look of the facility and the digital projector.
Chad is going to be carrying the torch … He’s going to try to take up the slack, and he’ll (give) the La Crosse community a place to go for a planetarium.
RF: The planetarium is still operating for one final semester this fall. What do you have in the works for the grand finale?
BA: We’re going out with a bang, not a whimper. Every Saturday in October, we’re doing “The Dawn of Astronomy.” It looks at Stonehenge and places around the world where, before telescopes were around, they made astronomical observations that helped them understand the seasons, the calendar and lots of basic astronomy things. We also do every Saturday in November, and we usually do three Saturdays in December: a “Christmas Star” program or one called “Winter Wonders” about winter solstice celebrations around the world.
So we’re going to have three monthly programs, October, November and part of December, before we have to shut things down. The music programs “Album Encounters” we do Friday nights. We do Pink Floyd. We love it. It sets the mood in the planetarium. The [Grateful] Dead, The Doors, [Led] Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, you name it.
