AstroFriday

Our AstroFriday presentation for November will feature a fantastic fulldome video for all of you who love learning about astronomy from different world cultures! San Juan College Planetarium is glad to present “One Sky Project”, a video produced by Sebastien Gauthier, international planetarium fulldome producer. This 45-minute video is composed of 7 video shorts, each of which highlights starlore from a different culture worldwide, including Navajo / Diné sky culture, to which Dr. David Begay and Dr. Nancy Maryboy contributed during the making of the video! Other cultures we will visit through the video are Greek, Hindi, Canadian Innuit, Japanese, and Hawaiian! We will also give out fall sky maps, while supplies last! The show times are at 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. There is no admission charge, but there is a maximum seating capacity of 60 in the planetarium, so seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis. In order to preserve dark-adaption, there is no late admittance into the planetarium once the show has started!

If weather permits, we will offer a free public stargaze with telescopes at 8:30 p.m. in the courtyard behind the planetarium after the last show. The stargaze will last a maximum of one hour, although the stargaze will end early if there are no observers for 15 minutes. There is no capacity limit for the stargaze, so come and join us! The planet Saturn and its nearly edge-on ring system will be our highlight for the evening, and we will also be able to view the waning gibbous Moon, rising in the east! Additionally, one of our top telescopic targets for the evening will be the colorful gold-and-blue double star, Albireo, as well as the blue-and-orange Gamma Andromedae! If weather conditions are particularly favorable, we may also see such deep-sky objects as the Ring Nebula in Lyra, the globular cluster M13 in Hercules, the sparkling Pleaides star cluster M45, and our nearest galactic neighbor M31, the Andromeda Galaxy! We hope you’ll be able to join us for this exciting event under the stars!

For more information, please feel free to call David Mayeux at 566-3361, or e-mail at mayeuxd@sanjuancollege.edu. Further information about Planetarium presentations and policies are available on the web on the SJC Planetarium Facebook page, or on the Events page on the SJC website. 

2025-2026 AstroFriday Schedule

• December 6th - Luminaria Stargaze
• December 12th - The Star of Bethlehem
• January 30 - Navajo Skies (Fulldome)
• February 27 - International Toys in Space
• March 27 - The Astronomy of Harry Potter
• April 24 - FORWARD! To the Moon - Artemis Program (Fulldome)
• May 8 - Sunstruck (Fulldome) - 7:30 to 8:30 with Stargaze at 9:30

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