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On Feb. 5, Cornerstone Christian School students all of ages were treated to an immersive, educational experience as the Huntsville U.S. Space and Rocket Center’s portable planetarium was set up. (Reporter photos/Noah Wortham)

By NOAH WORTHAM | Managing Editor

COLUMBIANA – Cornerstone Christian School students were treated to a captivating tour of the Milky Way and beyond without even having to leave campus thanks to a visit from the U.S. Space and Rocket Center’s planetarium.

On Wednesday, Feb. 5, students all of ages were treated to an immersive, educational experience as the Huntsville U.S. Space and Rocket Center’s portable planetarium was set up at CCS.

“When I walked in, it just blew me away,” said Tabbie Bird, an 11th grader at CCS. “It was just awesome. I don’t have many words to explain how the experience was. It was just mind blowing.”

The INTUITIVE Planetarium is a portable, inflatable dome that can be set up in indoor spaces such as gyms, lunchrooms and multipurpose rooms and contains a projector that immerses students in a variety of educational shows and tours.

“It is essentially a blow up planetarium, an inflatable one, where we are able to give people tours of space,” Planetarium Supervisor Sophia Villamor said. “Today, we are doing our skies show… teaching people how to navigate constellations and find deep space objects and basically just see what is there to look up at and see in our backyards.”

The show began with a demonstration of how the night sky typically appears before removing light pollution to reveal the entirety of what the night sky has to offer. The tour supervisor then taught students how to find the north star, Polaris, before exploring the winter circle and taking a look at a series of deep space objects such as star systems and nebulas.

“From there we headed off to Jupiter, the king of our planets, and visited one of its moons, Europa, before we ended our tour at Andromeda, the closest galaxy to the Milky Way,” Villamor said.

As Villamor provided an in-depth tour to students, her love for astronomy and the cosmos was evident for all to see.

“I am a space kid at heart,” Villamor said. “I was one of the kids who was looking up at our sky, getting all the books on the constellations (and) learning the stories as best as I could. And as I grew up, I realized I wanted to keep doing that. I wanted to keep exploring, keep learning in this way. And so being able to find this job where I can continue to learn myself, but not only that but teach other people and share my own love and maybe ignite some of theirs as well—it means a lot.”

And ignite a passion she did as students interested in astronomy like Bird were enamored by the tour and the educational experience the portable planetarium offered.

“When I was little, I got to look up at the night sky a lot, and I’ve always seen it as beautiful,” Bird said. “I like seeing that beauty. It’s kind of affected me because, especially when I go through hard times, I would just go outside and look up at the stars when it was dark and be able to calm down because it gave me a sense of calm and (that) there is beauty in the world and in the universe.”

Those interested in learning more the U.S. Space and Rocket Center’s INTUITIVE Planetarium can visit Rocketcenter.com/INTUITIVEPlanetarium/portable.

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