Morehead Planetarium and Science Center

By Jeff Hill

Hope you all have been enjoying Jay’s and Jonathan’s posts. We have a few more folks ready to join the blogging ranks. You’ve already heard from Karen Kornegay. She’s our marketing manager and will give you the heads up on special events at Morehead.

As soon as I get around the creating an account for her, our planetarium educator Mickey Jo Sorrell will start writing about what’s happening in the night sky. If you’ve been to any of our skywatching sessions at Jordan Lake, you may already know her.

And finally, you’ll get a chance to hear from our SciVentures participants in the next few weeks. These middle-schoolers will be blogging about their experiences in Morehead’s newest summer program.

Jeff Hill is Morehead's director of external relations

By Karen Kornegay

Everyone here at Morehead is excited about this new blog. We hope you like it, too. And if you do, you may want to check out some other blogs by Morehead staffers!
(Continue Reading)

Karen Kornegay is Morehead's marketing manager.

By Jonathan Frederick

Science cafes – or café scientifiques, if you’re French – have become another way to earn quality hipster points if you live near a science center. In short, they’re typically evening programs where grown-ups can get together, usually drink a bit of wine or beer, and discuss a current science topic with a renowned expert. Think TED talks without the thousand dollar registration fees or Britney Spears-style headsets. (By the way, if you haven’t checked out a TED talk, do so immediately. They’re the closest thing to pure, first world optimism that I’ve seen since the first space shuttle launch.
(Continue Reading)

Jonathan Frederick is Morehead's science program manager.

By Jay Heinz

I know what you’re thinking, “uhhhh, aren’t coyotes normally naked, Jay? Duh.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re freakin’ hilarious. But check this out. For those of you new to the fabulous world of 3D animation, this is what we call a wire frame. This wire frame is of the coyote in front of a chalkboard – the same as you can see in the previous blog post.

A wireframe is somewhat like a wire mesh that is squished, extruded, twisted and pulled to create models that will eventually be skinned or “textured” so that they look solid. Typically, a default gray texture is wrapped around the object so that the designer can get a better sense of what the object looks like. After the objects are modeled, they then have to be textured, animated, lit and finally rendered. But more about that next time…

Jay Heinz is Morehead's Digital Production Manager.

By Jay Heinz

This is an early render of “Coyote,” Morehead Planetarium and Science Center’s first 3D character created for our first full dome planetarium show by Morehead Digital Artist, Jim Kachelries.

Coyote is a know-it-all when it comes to science, but the truth is, he’s always wrong. In this show, we take the opportunity to correct Coyote’s misconceptions about the Earth, the Moon and the Sun and let you know the facts. Especially if you’re a third grader and think the sun is on fire. Which it is not. Or so I’ve heard.

Stay tuned for more photos from the new show and maybe even some short videos.

Jay Heinz is Morehead's Digital Production Manager.

By Jonathan Frederick

Starting this fall, Morehead is launching a brand new afterschool program. We’re going to give elementary school children a chance to explore science the way it should be explored: for fun, just to see how stuff works or why things happen. We’ll learn, play, design and tinker. We’ll experiment, test, re-test, and wonder. We’ll take field trips and meet scientists while making new friends.
(Continue Reading)

Jonathan Frederick is Morehead's science program manager.

By Jay Heinz

Denise (our Director of Education), Peter and Jim (two of our digital animators) and I met up with Richard (our Star Theater Director) and Mickey Jo (our theater manager) out in Chicago at the Adler Planetarium to attend the International Planetarium Society conference as well as DomeFest 2008 last week.
(Continue Reading)

Jay Heinz is Morehead's Digital Production Manager.

By Jeff Hill

Good news! You’ll soon be getting more views than just my own on this blog. I’ve recruited two new bloggers from our staff.
(Continue Reading)

Jeff Hill is Morehead's director of external relations