Engineering students bring EMU planetarium back to life

A team of recent EMU graduates reached for the stars in their senior capstone project.

Members of the Class of 2025 Micaiah Landis, Adam Stoltzfus, Laura Benner, Hellena Gebremedhin, Lleyton Stutzman, and Rebecca Tezazu, guided by faculty mentor Stefano Colafranceschi, spent hundreds of hours during the past school year restoring and improving the Spitz A-4 planetarium projector at EMU’s Suter Science Center. The projector, originally installed in 1968 when the science center was built, has spent most of its time in storage since the M.T. Brackbill Planetarium closed in 2007. 

On Tuesday, April 29, the engineering team unveiled the product of their hard work with a planetarium show—the first in more than 15 years, according to Stutzman—attended by about two-dozen guests. Titled “Stars for a Night in Spring,” the show was adapted from a program first performed by former planetarium director John Horst ’60 and featured synthesizer music he composed. As the lights cut off inside the Discovery Room, the domed ceiling transformed into a sea of stars, while members of the team pointed out constellations and shared the legends behind them.

Guests included past and present STEM faculty, staff, and alumni with ties to the planetarium. Joan Horst ’66, who recalled watching shows there as a student, said she hadn’t seen one since her late husband, Professor Emeritus John Horst, retired nearly 20 years ago. “I’m amazed they were able to convert it from electronic to computer controls,” she said of the restoration project.

For Joe Mast ’64, longtime professor and planetarium director from 1986-2005, watching the stars and galaxies drift across the dome brought back memories of leading Sunday afternoon programs and teaching astronomy classes at EMU. “It was a very popular class,” he said. “We had 65 seats in here, and it ran every semester, with rarely more than four or five empty seats.”

A trio of alumni at the show had spent a semester in an engineering design class disassembling the projector to understand how it worked. One of those alumni, Andrew Troyer ’19, said, “It was cool to see someone take something you’ve done to the next level like this.”

History of the planetarium

In 1968, the Suter Science Center at EMU was completed, featuring the M.T. Brackbill Planetarium and a then-state-of-the-art Spitz A-4 star projector. At the time, the projector cost about $25,000, equivalent to roughly $230,000 today when adjusted for inflation.

The projector replaced the university’s Spitz A-1 model, which had been used at the Vesper Heights planetarium atop the EMU Hill since 1946. The original A-1 model is still on display in the Discovery Room. Both planetariums are said to have attracted annual crowds of up to 4,000 visitors, from astronomy students to local residents to nearby grade school students

EMU’s planetarium directors over the years Maurice Thaddeus Brackbill, 1946 – 1956 Robert C. Lehman, 1956 – 1958 John Hershey, 1958 – 1960 John Horst, 1960 – 1962 Lehman, 1962 – 1979 Horst, 1979 – 1986 Joe Mast, 1986 – 2005 Horst, 2005 – 2007

When John Horst retired in 2007, EMU was left with no prospective astronomers on the faculty to continue the planetarium’s programming. And, the 40-year-old projector had mechanical problems that would have been costly to fix or replace. As a result, the planetarium closed and the projector was lowered into storage beneath the floor. The space was converted into a classroom for workshops and a display area for large specimens, such as the giant Kodiak brown bear that stood guard above the projector in the center of the room. After renovations to the science center, the projector was brought back out and placed on a pair of tables.

Resurrecting the projector

The six students on the team installed new motors, sensors, and a Raspberry Pi mini-computer to control the movement of the projector. The large panel of switches and dials that once operated the machine has been replaced with a web application that can be accessed wirelessly from any internet-connected device. Enter a location, date, and time into the app, and the projector can simulate the night sky as it would have appeared then and there. “We had some friends in here who were checking out the sky at the time they were born,” Benner said.

The students also designed, welded, and built a custom steel-and-wood base to support the projector and allow it to be stowed away when not in use. To darken the room, they sewed heavy-duty blackout curtains to cover the many surrounding windows.

During the restoration, the xenon bulb inside the projector’s star ball broke, and students scrambled to find a replacement, eventually swapping it out for an LED bulb. In total, the team spent about $2,400 on the project.

Members of the team said their goal for the project was not only to bring the projector back to life but also to make it more accessible and user-friendly. “It’s very easy to use,” Stutzman said during a presentation at EMU’s ACE Festival on April 17. “You don’t have to know anything about astronomy.”

By documenting their work, they said future students will have a clear understanding of the projector’s inner workings and will be able to perform additional upgrades. For instance, a future engineering capstone project could focus on restoring the planet orrery, which projects five planets, the sun and Earth’s moon but is currently inoperable.

Professor Daniel King, director of EMU’s engineering program, said he had long kept the idea of revitalizing the planetarium in the back of his mind. When he saw the team of engineering students searching for a project, he proposed they take it on. He said there’s potential for future planetarium shows, open to community members of all ages. “I would love for that to happen,” King said.

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Read more about the history of the EMU planetarium below:

Planetarium on Vesper Heights and in Suter Science Center exposes generations to starry skies