Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

The two planetariums we ordered from the toy store arrived today. Late in the afternoon one of our academic service faculty told me that the order he sent in had already been delivered even though he still hadn’t sent the payment request slip, only the materials requisition form.

From my days in that job, I remember just how many weeks can be cut out from the process if you tell the purchasing office where the equipment can be bought instead of having to let them field several suppliers, along with standard delay for bribing and counter-bidding.

I got the two boxes, tied together, from the supply room. The technician was telling me when he had been called to pick up the stuff, he had asked another guy to go with him because he had no idea how big or heavy one planetarium was, let alone two. In fact, I was able to haul both of them back to the department easily, and I passed by the chairman’s cubicle to tell him the news. A few minutes later he went to the small back room (the best place to darken and test the projections) look at them.

They’re both battery-operated, which is my main disappointment. I mean, it becomes portable and everything, but dry cells can only contain so much power. First order of business is to see how they can be reconfigured for connection to a wall socket.

The Smithsonian 3-in-1 was the first one I opened. The projector is just flashlight shaped, and it doubles as a shining sun when the planets are attached to metal rods around it. In projector mode, the sun sphere’s opaque top half is replaced with the transparent domes. The projection wasn’t all that clear or bright, even if the batteries we used were Energizer (all that the supply room stocks now – their budget has been boosted since my time 4 years ago).

The planets, including the little and big Earth (for displaying the Earth-Moon system) were unpainted white balls. There was a glow-in-the-dark paint set included, and we already thought of putting some astronomy-enrolled students to work on that as a special project. If they screw up and we have to do over, they have to buy their own paints if it runs out.

The Geo Safari model had a more stable elongated base. The bulb looked like an LED, and it’s a good thing there were a few spares with the set. According to the manual, ideal projection distance was no more than eight feet, so even though the names and constellations were readable on the ten-foot-ceiling, it was a little faded.

The dome was another story. It stood 21 inches tall, with 20+ hexagonal and triangular pieces that have to be taped together. Immediately we thought of making another dome at least twice as big using illustration boards with the same white sides. It still took time to set up, though, and wasn’t collapsible like I thought which would have been a breeze to prop up on off-campus displays.

The edge of the projector even had the shapes of an urban skyline, which was silhouetted on the bottom along the “horizon”.

There was also a 30-minute “intriguing” audiotape included, but I haven’t listened to it yet.