*Time to renew your membership in Nordic Planetarium Association NPA*

Lars Broman: *Short Report from the NPA'99 Conference*

Dale Smith, IPS President: *Remarks Delivered at the Nordic Planetarium Conference in Tampere, Finland, 4 September 1999*

Giedrius Straizys: *The Planetarium in Vilnius*

Helle and Jaak Jaaniste: *The story of the Planetarium in Tartu*

Dale Smith: *A Nordic Moon Project: A Challenge to Obtain a 24-Hour Photograph of the Circumpolar Full Moon in December*

I apologize for making you wait for three months on your next NPEN. I will try to be a little more regular during the coming year (but maybe not one NPEN per month). Please also note the new NPEN address: lbr@teknoland.se.

Your news and views for Nordic Science Centers and Planetariums - written in English or Scandinavian - are always welcome to NPEN, address lbr@teknoland.se. Back numbers are available on Internet at http://www.dalnet.se/~ stella/npen/. Find more about NPA on http://www2.nrm.se/cosmonova/tc-wnpa.html.

Invite your science center/planetarium friend to subscribe by mailing "subscribe" to me. Unsubscribe by mailing the word "unsubscribe" to me.

Thanks to the NPEN contributors and hejdaa fraan Lasse.

*****************************************************

Now is the right time to make sure that you are a member in NPA 2000!

Personal membership in NPA, costs (approx.) SEK 100 for one year to Nordic Planetarium Association Swedish postgiro account No. 75 90 70-6. Institutional membership costs SEK 50 x dome diameter in meters. Find more about NPA on http://www2.nrm.se/cosmonova/tc-wnpa.html.

We hope that not only current members but also former and new members will choose to pay dues for the year 2000. Welcome!

This year's NPA Conference was hosted by Timo Rahunen and took place 4-5 September at Särkänniemi in Tampere, Finland. Several planetarians from non-Nordic countries, among them IPS President Dale Smith and planetarian Vadim Belov from Nizhny Novgorod Planetarium in Russia, participated in the event, which included a membership meeting, paper sessions, and a workshop about digital image processing, 3D-animations and digital video, as well as a Saturday evening smoke sauna in Hangaslahti (which was absolutely fantastic!). The membership meeting re-elected the NPA officers for another two years. A kind invitation from Hans Lundstrom, Kosmorama Space Theater, to hold the next NPA Conference in Borlange, Sweden, was accepted with acclamation.

During the membership meeting it was furthermore decided that NPA, which of course is open to members of all nations, especially shall invite Baltic state planetarians as members. Thus the NPA region includes not only Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, but also Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Dale Smith's speech as well as the reports from Estonia and Lithuania are included in this issue of NPEN, and I hope to come back with the Russian report in a later issue.

Dale Smith, IPS President

Good morning. It is a pleasure to bring you greetings from the International Planetarium Society and its members around the world. The year 1999 marks the 29th anniversary of IPS and the 14th anniversary of the Nordic Planetarium Association. The NPA is one of the eighteen regional associations of planetariums that are affiliated with IPS. Existing affiliates serve planetariums in Europe, North America, and Japan, and a new Australian association will affiliate with IPS later this year. These regional affiliates embrace many languages-including French, German, Italian, the Nordic languages, Russian, and Japanese-in addition to English.

We may refer to the lights we project on our domes as stjärnor, stjerner, tähti, zviozdaii, or stars. We may use a star projector from Zeiss, Spitz, Goto, Evans & Sutherland, or elsewhere. We may work in a mobile dome or in a large or small permanent dome. But we are united by our love for the universe and by our enthusiasm for sharing its wonders with our classes and audiences. It is this common interest that brings us together in our professional societies like NPA and IPS. In IPS we seek to build bridges between planetarians from many nations and languages so we can learn from our colleagues around the world.

Each society has its own unique strengths. NPA is distinguished not only by its large planetariums but also by its many mobile and small permanent planetariums. The relaxed and interactive style of these smaller planetariums makes them a wonderful environment for teaching astronomy in a way that complements the more elaborate programs in the larger domes.

NPA is also distinguished as the regional affiliate in which the first IPS conference in Europe was held, when we convened in Borlänge in 1990. This was my first IPS conference, and I think the one in which IPS made a major step in becoming a truly intercontinental society, and the process of internationalization continues today. NPA President Lars Broman has been a major force in this effort and today serves as Chair of the IPS Language Committee and as editor of the International News column in our journal Planetarian.

While I cannot claim any Nordic ancestry, I have traveled extensively throughout the Nordic world from Finland to Greenland, and have visited planetariums in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, including the world's northernmost in Tromsø, Norway, where I must admit that the diurnal motion of the starfield looked much like my North Pole demonstration.

IPS is made up of nearly 600 individual planetarians like you and me. We hail from six continents and 30 countries. Most of us are also members of one or more regional affiliates that serve our geographic area or language. For example, more than 100 IPS members are European, including many from the Nordic countries, and our distinguished Past-President is Thomas Kraupe from Munich, Germany.

As an international association, IPS is governed by its elected officers and by a Council of representatives from each of the 18 regional affiliates. Each affiliate has one vote regardless of size. Thus, although about 60% of IPS members are from the USA, the seven American regionals have only 37% of the votes on the IPS Council. Furthermore, membership dues are uniform worldwide, regardless of international postage costs. The 1997 and 1998 Council meetings were held in Europe, and most recent conferences have been held outside the US: in 1990 we met in Borlänge, Sweden; in 1996, in Osaka, Japan; 1998, in London, England; the 2000 conference will be in Montréal, Québec, Canada; and 2002 will be in Morelia, Mexico.

IPS members receive many benefits. We publish a quarterly journal, the Planetarian, whose columns and feature articles offer a worldwide variety of ideas and information. We publish Proceedings of our biennial conferences. In odd-numbered years, we publish the IPS Directory of the World's Planetariums, listing information on nearly 3000 planetariums around the world. In even-numbered years, we publish the IPS Resource Directory, an international listing of companies and organizations that provide products and services of interest to planetariums. We produce occasional special publications; one currently in preparation is a book of tips for small and mobile planetariums being edited by Susan Reynolds. We have agreements with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Jet Propulsion Lab to distribute their latest images to IPS members at low cost. We are also inaugurating the distribution of low-cost videodisks; the first one is currently in production and will include superb video sequences from the European Space Agency. We have developed an international list of dozens of research astronomers who have agreed to answer questions from IPS members. We have a growing web site available to everyone; while it is currently in English, we hope to translate parts of it into other languages; our membership brochure is now available in seven languages; and we have begun an exchange of abstracts between the Planetarian and affiliate publications in other languages.

A major goal of our IPS leadership is to promote the continuing international growth of the Society. We invite each of you to consider becoming a member of IPS. We have much to learn from each other as we all strive to become better planetarians. I look forward to meeting you at this conference and to learning more about your exciting work. Thank you.

Our planetarium is in Vilnius, Lithuania. We have a 12.5 m dome and a Zeiss RFP star projector. There are 144 concentric seats. Most of our visitors are school children groups, but we also have public shows. We have shows from September until June, while July - August is our technical maintenance period. We usually have about five lectures a day from Monday through Saturday.

We have extra equipment such as six All-Sky projectors, four slide projectors, a good sound system, and special effects projectors, including supernova sequence, expanding universe, and eclipsing double star bought from Sky Skan. We also have some self-made projectors such as moon with a satellite, etc.

Our director is Algimantas Azusienis and I work as engineer of electronics.

Helle Jaaniste, Science Center AHHAA, and Jaak Jaaniste, Astronomy Club of the Tartu Old Observatory, Tartu, Estonia

In 1985 the Tallinn Palace of Young Pioneers obtained a Zeiss ZKP-2 planetarium. Since the Palace had no room big enough, it remained at stock until 1988 when it was sold to Tartu. In Tartu a group of young astronomers put it up in the main building of Tartu KEK, one of the biggest building companies in Tartu. The planetarium was opened in September 1988 and operated until June 1989, when the time of contract terminated. At present, the projector belongs to the Astronomical Club of the Tartu Old Observatory, a non-profit organization which rents rooms in the old observatory building and acts as coordinator of school astronomy and amateur activities.

As the previous owners, the Club has no space for the planetarium. We have a plan to rebuild one detached small telescope dome into a planetarium; the idea has been approved by the University government and reconciled with the Tartu Town Committee of Heritage. As always the main problem is money, but we hope it will find its solution during the next year.

At the beginning of 1998 when the newly formed AHHAA Center organized its first great exhibition, Mrs. Tiiu Sild (the project leader of the Center) had an idea to use the planetarium as a self-standing part of the exhibition. A plastic dome was mounted on a two meters high wooden base covered by textile and the dome was painted twice outside by opaque aluminum paint. So we got a pavilion with 80 seats, and with the operator's table put inside near the projector. The presentations were based on free improvisation, and the operator drove the projector manually showing the possibilities of planetarium. For school groups, an educational part containing the diurnal motion of celestial bodies and the change of seasons was included.

The exhibition opened at 26 May 1998 by Lennart Meri, the President of Estonia, and became extremely popular. During 36 days we had 22000 visitors; most of them saw the planetarium performance. The planetarium took no extra entrance fee, but the total entrance fee of EEK 25 (approx. $ 2.00) was considered quite expensive for Estonians. The questionnaires filled in by visitors marked the planetarium as the most attractive part of the exhibition.

During the winter, the planetarium was used by the Tallinn Science Center and set up in the building of the Tallinn power plant, today Museum of Energy. When Mrs. Sild planned her new exhibition in cooperation with the London Natural History Museum, the planetarium had been included despite of its obvious unfitness with giant robotic insects and other biological attractions. And again, our show became extremely popular, even if we lost our first place in the questionnaire to the British giant insects. About 35 000 tickets were sold, the total number of visitors exceeded 50 000, and most of them visited the planetarium. Daily we gave 6 - 10 performances, each one about 20 minutes long.

The success of our planetarium led to the offer from the owner of the exhibition hall to keep the planetarium there without any charge up to the end of their next event, the yearly School Fair. We agreed with our lecturers that a small fee about EEK 5 ($ 0.30) would be established to cover their honorarium. To our great surprise we had only 20 - 30 visitors per seance, carried twice a day. One of our lecturers, who had worked during the first season of our planetarium 10 years ago, remembered that they had the same problem with small numbers of visitors also at that time.

Now we come to the main conclusion of our report: the sky is wonderful, but nobody wants to pay for it. In order to attract people to the planetarium we must make some knight move on our educational chessboard, like connecting the star show to some popular amusement. As we know, most of planetarians use cinema-like effects to organize events in the planetarium. We propose another possibility: to include the normal (astronomical) show into the program of some larger event without extra fee. Our experience shows that if the event is popular, the entrance fee may be quite high and the planetarium will rise the popularity of the main event at every case. So we can bind the commercial success to our great aim - to popularize astronomy and bring more people to science.

Two remarks concerning to the organizations mentioned above:

Tartu Old Observatory (Tähetorn, the "Star Tower", web site http://www.obs.ee) is built at the beginning of last century and equipped by the world-famous astronomer F. G. W. Struve, author of one of the first catalogues of double stars, who first measured the stellar parallax in 1838. The building has kept its original view and there is a rich collection of old instruments. At present, the Observatory belongs to the Tartu University and is planned to be the main building of the coming AHHAA Center.

The Science Center AHHAA of the Tartu University (website http://www.ahhaa.ee) was founded in 1997 by the initiative of Lennart Meri, the President of Estonia. The founders of the Center are Tartu University and the City of Tartu; some financial support has also come from the Ministry of Education, the Open Estonian Foundation, and some other authorities. The Center is in the project stage, project leader is Mrs. Tiiu Sild, and Chairman of Scientific Council is Prof. Jaak Kikas.

The 24-hour sun is a phenomenon that is well-known to most planetarians. I regularly demonstrate it to my astronomy classes and occasionally to my public audiences. Of course the midnight sun is familiar to all Nbbordic planetarians, and I have had the good fortune to see it many times. Classic images of the 24-hour sun photographed at 1-hour intervals have been taken, and we are all familiar with some of these images.

However, the 24-hour moon is a much less well-known phenomenon. At sufficiently northern latitudes, the December full moon does not set and thus is circumpolar and visible for 24 hours; at the same time, the Sun does not rise and thus the sky is dark except for possible noon twilight. Since the 24-hour moon occurs only during the arctic winter, the accompanying temperatures are much colder than those that attend the 24-hour sun. Thus few tourists ever see the 24-hour moon, though it is an important factor to residents in providing natural light during the polar night.

Because the weather is so cold, photography is more difficult and I suspect that few if any photographs have been taken that show the hourly progress of the 24-hour moon around the sky. Though several inhabited landmasses lie far enough north to see the circumpolar winter full moon, the Nordic countries contain the most temperate of these locations, and thus the ones in which photography would be easiest. Thus I would challenge you to obtain a 24-exposure photograph showing the hourly motion of the circumpolar December full moon.

The range of latitudes at which this midwinter full moon is circumpolar varies during the 18.6-year cycle of the regression of the nodes of the Moon's orbit. The December full moon lies at the right ascension of the summer solstice, or 6 hr east of the vernal equinox. Thus when the ascending node of the moon's orbit is at the vernal equinox, this December full moon will be at a declination of +28°, or 5° higher than the midsummer sun is. This is the declination corresponding to the major standstills of moonrise and moonset marked by some Neolithic stones in Britain.

At this most northern declination, the midwinter full moon is circumpolar from latitudes as far south as 61 1/2°, or 5° south of the arctic circle, and thus readily accessible from much of Finland, Sweden, and Norway.

When the effects of refraction are included, this midwinter full moon would even be marginally circumpolar from the northern tip of the Shetland Islands near latitude 61°.

Shetland, like Britain and Ireland, is marked with Neolithic standing stones. I wonder if any of these ancients made note of this once-in-a-lifetime full moon that dipped into the water but did not completely set.

However, this most northerly declination was last reached by the moon in late 1987 and will not be reached again until early 2006. In 1999, the midwinter full moon will have a declination of only 21°, and thus be circumpolar only at latitudes north of 69°. So conditions would be marginal at Tromso (69 1/2°), which has nearly a sea horizon to the north. At Hammerfest (71°), the noon moon in the north would be higher, but Hammerfest is on the south side of mountainous ridge, and thus does not have an ideal northern horizon.

The geometry is much more favorable in Spitsbergen, where the main settlement, Longyearbyen, lies at 77°. A observer at the town center would see a relatively low northern horizon, and the low moon would be at an altitude of 8°. The geometry is even better at the scientific station at Ny Ålesund (lat 78°). Here the northern horizon is almost flat and the low moon would be at altitude 9°. During the 18.6 year cycle, this low moon altitude ranges between 7° and 17°. This site is also sufficiently far north that in December, there is practically no noon twilight at all.

Midwinter temperatures in Longyear/Ny Ålesund are about -10°C. While this is cold, it is not prohibitively cold, and thus it might be technically possible to obtain an extended-time picture. I have photographed with my own camera for extended periods at this temperature without polar oiling and had little trouble.

Sites equally far north exist in Greenland at Qaanaaq (78°), where there is a Danish geophysical station, and in Canada at the Eureka weather station (80°), but the winter temperatures, especially at Eurkea, hover at or below -30°C, which is prohibitively cold for extended outdoor photography. Other Canadian and Alaskan sites at latitudes around 70° also have very cold winter temperatures.

Thus among arctic sites, the Nordic countries have the most favorable locations for obtaining a 24-hour photograph of the circumpolar moon. At the present phase of the moon's 18.6-year cycle, the geometry is marginally acceptable at Tromsø and is most favorable in Spitsbergen; over the next half-decade, the zone of circumpolarity will expand southward at the rate of about 1° per year. Thus I would challenge you to make connections with the science teams at Ny Ålesund and tackle the technical challenges of taking a circumpolar moon photo. An alternative would be to wait a few years and try it from Tromsø. If you are successful, you will secure a spectacular image of a lunar phenomenon that deserves to be more widely known.