She had seen it all before, of course, but this was something different, and no less mesmerizing.

There inside Featherbed Lane Elementary School in Woodlawn, on a sunny weekday morning, 9-year-old Paris H. cast her eyes up and stared wide-eyed as the moon and stars and planets moved across a dark night sky over her head. “This is pretty cool,” the fourth-grader said. “I like being in here.”

“Here” was Starlab, a $17,770 inflatable dome that was unveiled recently at Featherbed Lane Elementary as the latest star in Baltimore County’s instructional tool kit. Inside the
portable, silver-colored planetarium, as many as 30 children can view projections on the curved ceiling of everything from a fluid, rotating galaxy to visual descriptions of how the constellations were interpreted by ancient North American, African, or Asian cultures.

Seated near Paris, Kenwood High School alumnus and NASA space shuttle astronaut Dr. Thomas Jones was just as enthralled with the Starlab experience. He had spoken to Featherbed Lane students moments earlier in a special assembly to meet him and his shuttle crewmate, Commander Robert Curbeam, and to welcome Starlab to the Baltimore County Public School system.

“I became interested in space when I was 5 and my grandmother gave me a little 25-cent book called ‘Space Flight’,” Jones said to students. “But you’re exploring space today, right here in the gymnasium, with Starlab.”

Added Curbeam, who savored returning to Featherbed Lane where he attended school before graduating from Woodlawn High School, “This is the first step to achieving your dreams. If you want to be an astronaut – or a nurse or carpenter or a doctor – you need to go to school, work hard, and get a good education like the one you’re getting here at Featherbed Lane.”

The planetarium is also among the centerpieces of Baltimore County’s emphasis on math and science education, said BCPS Superintendent Dr. Joe A. Hairston. “Starlab is our way of making science come alive for children,” he said. “It’s also been an honor to have Commander Curbeam and Dr. Jones here with us to help celebrate Starlab. I don’t know of too many other school systems that can say they’ve had two astronauts to graduate from its high schools. Baltimore County can say that.”

Dr. Hairston and the two astronauts were joined by School Board President James Sasiadek, School Board member Thomas Grzymski, BCPS science director H.B. Lantz and school Principal Eileen Copple in discussing space exploration and Starlab with students at the special assembly.

Despite the presence of so many dignitaries, however, Starlab was the star of the day. Designed to be easily transported from school to school, the dome is an innovative use of space and imagination.

After it is inflated, children crawl through a wide tunnel to reach Starlab’s center. Inside, instructors use projection cylinders to cast the heavens on Starlab’s interior domed roof, creating the illusion of being outside at night, far from city lights, and gazing at the dazzling Milky Way overhead. Spacy, new age music adds an appropriately ethereal ambiance to the experience.

“It reminds me of my favorite thing to do in space, which is to look outside the shuttle windows,” said Dr. Jones. Gazing at the earth and the stars around it in the darkness of space “is really a beautiful thing to look at.”

Starlab really simulates what the sky looks like on a dark night in the country, said Tim Kent, one of two Starlab resource teachers (with Susan Riffe) who will be taking the planetarium to all 103 BCPS elementary schools for instruction.

“We can teach children about everything from the phases of the moon to how the stars were used in Greek mythology,” Kent said. “It’s really quite a device.”

Davontae E., 7, agreed. “It’s like you’re an astronaut, but you’re not in space,” he said as he assisted guests into the Starlab portal (“No shoes, please!”). And while Davontae was still planning on a career as a construction worker, his second grade helpmate Jasmyn W. had been sufficiently impressed by the dome to turn her dreams toward becoming an astronaut.

“My favorite part is when they put things on the ceiling that you can’t see at night,” she said, referring to Starlab’s colorful connect-the-stars depictions of each constellation. “I think that’s neat.”

See event photos

Story and Photos by Charles Herndon Communications Officer