Homemade Sky

For the benefit of fascinated multitudes in four of the biggest U. S. cities--Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles -- planetaria project artificial stars on artificial skies by means of big, complicated, dumbbell-shaped projectors, made by Zeiss and imported from Germany. Present price of a Zeiss instrument is around $130,000.

Unveiled last week in Springfield, Mass., was a homebuilt projector which cost less than $12,000. It was built by able, earnest Frank Korkosz, technician of Springfield's Museum of Natural History. Not dumbbell-shaped but spherical, the Korkosz instrument projects on a 40-ft. (diameter) hemispherical ceiling 7,150 of the naked eye and borderline stars visible in every direction from earth. Astronomers did not quite share Mr. Korkosz' belief that his machine works as well or nearly as well as a Zeiss instrument but they seemed to feel that any reasonably good projector is better than none, and the Springfield public showed every sign of liking its homemade sky.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.