A class of Jones Magnet Middle School sixth-graders tilted their heads back and stared at the ceiling as they prepared to learn a new lesson.
Sara Clemmer, a math teacher, turned off each set of lights until the only thing visible was a projection of a clear night’s sky in the school’s planetarium. A chorus of “ooohs” and “aaahs” filled the room as darkness fell, and one student exclaimed “it’s so pretty!”
One by one, they held their makeshift telescopes — toilet paper tubes — up to their eyes and peered around the ceiling of their school’s planetarium, gawking at the stars projected above them.
Clemmer instructed them to focus on one spot in the sky and count as many stars as they could see through the tube. The students were quiet, other than the sporadic shuffling to write a number down on a piece of paper in the cool darkness of the planetarium.
A few minutes later, Clemmer turned up the brightness of the night’s sky to better reflect the light pollution that obscures our view of the stars.
Earlier in the class, a video specially formatted for the projectors to show on the domed, sloping walls of the planetarium ominously hailed that “We are losing the darkness of night at the speed of light.”
Light filled the room while students counted the number of stars they could see in that same spot. Back in science teacher Susan Booth’s classroom, they calculated the ratio of stars seen on a clear night to that of a polluted sky.
Unsurprisingly, the students found, the number of stars they could see drastically diminished with the light made from parking lots, businesses and homes factored in. Students scrambled to write out sticky-notes of how light affects the planet.
Three groups wrote animals, another mentioned baby sea turtles trying to crawl out to sea, while one student scrawled “US” in capital letters. Brennan Dosher, 12, put it simply: “They light up the sky with pollution.”
Planetarium’s history
A few years ago, having a hands-on, interactive lesson — or even a regular class — inside the planetarium would not have been possible.
Jones’ planetarium was built in the 1970s when a surge of federal funding encouraged schools to add the stargazing rooms during NASA’s Apollo mission years.
It’s not the only school-based one in Hampton Roads: Virginia Beach’s Plaza Middle School opened one around the same time. Chesapeake Public Schools built the first in 1963, also with federal funds.
Jones’ planetarium was open for a few decades, serving students across Hampton, until budget cuts meant a planetarium director position was no longer funded.
The planetarium fell into disrepair — it was used for school storage while the star projector sat in the middle of the room, unused.
In 2002 a volunteer group, the Virginia Peninsula Astronomy/Stargazers, was formed and recruited people to help clean up and use the facility for monthly presentations. For about 14 years, almost all maintenance done on the facility was through the private group with out-of-pocket requests.
Booth saw the potential in using the planetarium for classes, and applied for grants through Community Knights GIFT program.
So far, more than $8,800 has been given to the planetarium’s renovation from Community Knights, which runs bingo games to raise money to support nonprofits and public school organizations.
Booth said the first money from Community Knights opened the door to apply for other grants. In total, she and others at Jones have found about $15,000 to renovate the planetarium.
“They needed that initial grant funding to give the project viability, so that enabled them to get grant funding from other sources,” said Jennifer Brown, president and CEO of Community Knights. “We’re really working to try to be a jump start to get an investment from the community on the Peninsula, to really work with our public schools, as they’ve faced budget cuts since 2008, to spur on a reinvestment in our schools.”
Refurbishment
Thanks to the grant funding, the flooring in the planetarium has been replaced. The blue fabric upholstery covering the chairs that are tilted back just far enough to observe the show on the ceiling has been deep cleaned. Projectors to show movies such as the one about light pollution were installed.
The walls have all been repainted, a large mural colorfully depicting spaceflight greeting those entering the room. Stylish artwork of Jupiter and other destinations across the solar system, courtesy of NASA, hangs across the walls.
Chalk art designed by Jones students covers a wall bearing the message: “Jones Magnet Middle School Planetarium, where the stars come out!” An adjacent room has been revamped, too, to become a lab in the future for science, technology, engineering and math projects.
“The room was created in the ’70s, so for 30 years, things haven’t been really cleaned, so this gave us an opportunity,” Booth said. “Without Community Knights, we wouldn’t be at the point where we are now.”
Booth and Clemmer have bigger plans than just showing starry skies to classes and those who sign up for Astronomy Club.
That’s not to say that Astronomy Club isn’t popular: the latest meeting had 18 students eagerly measure out the distance between each planet as they filed down a hallway following a sun-shaped tape measure. It turns out that Jupiter is a whole lot farther from Earth than the students estimated.
Clemmer is trained to work in planetariums, a job she held when she attended James Madison University. It was the planetarium that Booth used to help convinced Clemmer to apply for a job at Jones.
She’s one of the few people who can properly operate all the equipment, but is training other teachers at Jones to use the projectors and the space for outside-the-box classes.
“They’re seeing something in a way which they haven’t seen before,” Clemmer said. “They’re seeing something different, so they tend to typically remember those things more when they see it in such a strange, cool, interesting way.”
Brown said that when her daughter attended Jones in the late 2000s, the planetarium was locked up and was a “mysterious thing they were never allowed to access,” a far cry from Brown’s frequent visits when she was in school.
“When we went to go and see the impact of the grant, she got to come with me to tour the facility and she was so excited,” Brown said. “Now that facility is going to be able to be used for so much more than just astronomy. The fact they can take that projector and plug it in for use for lesson plans across the broader curriculum, and they can open up that facility to all of Hampton City Schools and they’re talking about using it across the region, the asset that that facility is going to be to the community is huge.”
