If it weren't for Harlow Shapley, it might've been an observatory.

Today, over 50 years after its opening, the Morehead Planetarium building in Chapel Hill, NC actually sports both a planetarium and an observatory. But in 1945, when John Motley Morehead III sought advice on his desire to build an observatory as a gift to the University of North Carolina, it took the comments of Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley to change his mind.

John Motley Morehead III (1870-1965)

Shapley believed a planetarium would be a greater benefit to the public. "Your state needs cosmic awakening," he told Morehead, "North Carolinians are the most astronomically ignorant people in all America." He had drawn his opinion from the fact that his Harvard Observatory always received many letters from across the country when comets appeared in the skies, but none of them came from North Carolina.

Needless to say, Morehead was rather concerned about his fellow North Carolinians being called "astronomically ignorant." His reply: "Amend your statement, Dr. Shapely, to read, 'Of all people in America, North Carolinians are the most ignorant of astronomical matters,' and we'll build a planetarium." Shapley happily complied, and so a planetarium was born.

Morehead, who had graduated from UNC-CH in 1891 in chemistry, had made much of his fortune as one of the founders of Union Carbide after having invented processes for producing acetylene gas and calcium carbide. The grandson of a former governor of North Carolina, he also had a distinguished career as an engineer, industrialist, and ambassador.

His goal was to give his alma mater an unusual gift that it would not buy for itself, and Chapel Hill was certainly an unusual place to build a planetarium. At the time there were only five major planetaria in the entire country, and those were in the big cities of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. By comparison, Chapel Hill was a small southern college town in a county of about 35,000 people. This planetarium would also be the first one in the world to be built on a college campus.

John Motley Morehead III (left) and planetarium director Tony Jenzano greet schoolchildren visiting the new Morehead Planetarium.

In keeping with Morehead's desire to give a gift that reflects the arts as well as the sciences, the Morehead Building also contains an art collection as well as lavish rooms for official university receptions. It is in addition home to the Morehead Foundation, which funds the prestigious Morehead Scholarship. The building was designed by the New York-based architecture firm of Eggers and Huggins, also responsible for the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. The cornerstone was laid on November 29, 1947, and the planetarium was officially opened on May 10, 1949.

The original Carl Zeiss Model II star projector itself was a little difficult to come by. Many of the German-built projectors had been destroyed during World War II, as had most of the Zeiss factories. Fortunately, Mr. Morehead had formerly been an ambassador to Sweden in 1930 and knew of a Zeiss projector in Stockholm which he could purchase. The projector had been dismantled by its owners and stored in a basement for protection during the war. The machine survived the bombs, but the dome it was built for didn't. Two and a half tons of planetarium parts crossed the Atlantic in 14 crates, spending several months in a nearby campus gymnasium before being installed in Chapel Hill.

The first director of Morehead Planetarium was astrophysicist Dr. Roy K. Marshall, who had previously been in charge of the Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia. He came to Chapel Hill with Harlow Shapley's recommendation as 'the best planetarium man in America" for his showmanship as well as his scientific expertise. Marshall also became the first astronomy professor at UNC since 1831. He and planetarium technician Tony Jenzano, whom Marshall described as a "mechanical genius," assembled the star projector in seventeen hours. Jenzano would become planetarium director in 1951, when Marshall left.

In 1959, Morehead Planetarium became a small but important part of NASA's race to the moon. As a training center for celestial navigation, the planetarium hosted nearly every astronaut from the Gemini, Mercury and Apollo missions. Under the simulated sky, Mercury astronauts sat in special "Link trainer" simulators designed to mimic the view from their spacecraft. Gemini and Apollo astronauts used other devices suited to their particular needs. By remote control, trainees could adjust the star projector to simulate pitch and roll motions. Yaw motion was achieved via a motor attached to the simulator itself. Planetarium technicians even built projectors to represent the changing sizes and phases of the Moon and Earth as their 'spacecraft' traveled between the two. Another projector simulated the docking lights of the Agena target vehicle used in the Gemini missions to practice rendezvous and docking procedures.

Planetarium employees conducted the training sessions, which often had to be developed from scratch. Among the lessons was fuel economy - the astronauts had to learn how to change their orientations in space while taking the shortest possible path.

Mercury Astronauts Ed White (left) and James McDivitt and demonstrate one of the training simulators used in the planetarium. Photo courtesy of NASA

Naturally, the astronauts-in-training had tight schedules, and could only stay in Chapel Hill a couple of days at a time. Accordingly, they spent long hours in the theater as they studied bright stars, constellations and coordinate systems. The training was vital - if ever the onboard instruments failed, the ship's orientation in space would have to be determined by eye.

A number of times, the training saved lives. During the final Mercury flight, every automatic guidance control aboard the Faith 7 capsule failed due to an electrical malfunction. During reentry, astronaut Gordon Cooper had to steer the capsule with manual controls - a difficult task at best -- using the stars as a guide most of the way. Interestingly enough, Cooper's splashdown was closer to its target than any other Mercury flight. Apollo 12, struck by lightning twice during liftoff, also required celestial navigation skills.

By the late 60's, the original star projector was wearing down. Fortunately, planetarium technology had improved a lot over the preceding 40 years. While a sturdy and elegantly crafted machine, the Zeiss Model II had its problems. It was difficult to maintain and clean. Its spindly spidery legs cast shadows on the dome, often blocking prominent stars or planets. The forty brightest stars, projected separately from the others, appeared on the dome as large circles two to three inches in diameter, rather far from the single-point ideal. The projector itself was motorized to demonstrate the different motions of the Earth and planets, but the motor speeds weren't freely variable. The motor for changing the time and date had three distinct speeds, the fastest of which was rarely used because it tended to jettison small parts of the projector.

The projector was replaced with a brand-new Carl Zeiss Model VI in 1969. This particular machine was the first production-built model of its type. It offered an improved starfield and variable motor speeds, and gave the operator much more control of its functions. The Zeiss VI is still in operation today.

A full time technical staff maintains the star projector and the many other devices scattered around the star theater. In 1998, the technicians at Morehead took on a challenge - to replace the slip ring contacts of the Zeiss Model VI. While this doesn't sound like much, the procedure had never before been done - not even by technicians at the Carl Zeiss company. The slip rings let electricity flow to the projector while allowing it to rotate freely.

In January 1984 Morehead Planetarium became one of the first facilities to add computer automation to the star theater. Before, planetarium shows required the show presenter to command a control panel with dozens of knobs and switches used to guide the star projector and bring up images on the dome. In addition, a technician in another room operated a variety of other theater controls - without even being able to see the dome. Many of the programs were tightly choreographed to a soundtrack. The difficulty of manual control obviously limited the visual complexity of the shows. Today, with automation, the theater boasts well over a hundred separate slide projectors and special effects, all of which can be accessed to within a sixteenth-of-a-second accuracy. Many of the shows are produced in-house, with the use of a sound studio and an art staff.

Still, despite their flash, automated shows can't take questions from the audience. More intimate live star shows are presented weekly, to provide visitors with a guide to the current night sky. The star theater also serves as a lab for introductory astronomy classes at UNC. Classes and workshops are available for students of all ages, as well as free observing sessions at nearby dark sites.

In 1975, the rest of Mr. Morehead's plans were completed with the addition of an observatory, housing a 24" Schmitt-Cassegrain telescope. While the lights of downtown Chapel Hill tend to make real research difficult at the observatory, it still serves as a valuable learning tool for astronomy students. Guests can also visit the observatory, by reservation.

The UNC Department of Physics and Astronomy (which officially runs the observatory) makes the telescope available for remote control over the Internet for use by public schools in North Carolina. The Students Online As Researchers program, or SOLAR, will let students make observations of the Sun for hands-on science experiments. Since each observation takes only ten minutes, students will be able to take several observations during the course of a class period. The participating schools will be able to share images over the Internet. Students with a particular interest in astronomy may be given access to nighttime data taken by graduate students at the university.

Remote control of the Morehead Observatory will also serve as a testing ground of sorts - UNC, along with Michigan State, the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO), and the country of Brazil, is building the Southern Observatory for Astrophysical Research (SOAR) in the northern Andes in Chile. The four-meter telescope also will be available through remote automation, to cut travel costs for researchers, and to provide a more flexible observing schedule. Most observatories require researchers to reserve a block of several days, which can be expensive and an inefficient use of time for both the astronomer and the telescope. With remote control, an astronomer could, for instance, reserve 15-minute blocks nightly for a month to allow for tracking of an object over a long stretch of time.

SOAR is also unique in that its design allows optical instruments to be switched almost instantaneously, while traditional observatories can require an entire day to remove and replace equipment.

A display with live connections to both SOAR and the Morehead Observatory is planned for the planetarium's exhibit hall, so visitors can see recent images.

Under its current director, Dr. Lee Shapiro, Morehead Planetarium welcomed its 5 millionth visitor on May 20th, 1999 -- just in time for a fiftieth anniversary celebration. Many of the visitors to the planetarium are children who come with school groups from across the state. Shapiro, a professor in the Physics and Astronomy department at UNC, came to Morehead in 1982 after having served as director of the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University.

Morehead's membership program offers many benefits including a quarterly newsletter with articles on astronomy and space science, as well as information on observing sessions, classes and news about the planetarium. Funds raised through the membership program benefit the Education Endowment Fund ensuring the quality of the planetarium's programs and Star Theater presentations.

A wide variety of shows are available - from solar system sing-alongs for the younger set, to approachable discussions of stellar formation. Though the technology has changed over the years, the mission remains the same - to provide people with a friendly and informative introduction to the universe. We hope you have a chance to come by and experience our planetarium skies, then go outside and check out the real one, too.