When theaters close their doors, there’s always one light left onstage, called a ghost light. Today, there are ghost lights in venues around the world, and not just places where plays and musical entertainments take place. Planetarium domes and science centers closed their doors, too. That began in mid-March. It was like watching the lights go out in these special places. And, as of today, they remain out. Did they, too, leave on “ghost lights”?

As I write this, a very few such places are reopening. Most remain closed to the public. Some are closed to everyone, including their workers. Several big institutions, such as the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, went through massive layoffs in mid-May. And, there will be others letting people go. Places that have lasted this long, but find that they can’t sustain their already-bare staff levels.

So, when the reopenings do speed up, it could be weeks, months, or possibly up to a year or more for the majority of facilities. They’re not the most essential places to reopen first, and I think most people understand that. We have to take care of the basic needs of food and medicines, first. That’s a priority. But, soon, I hope, we’ll be able to bring our cultural and scientific institutions back online. That includes planetarium domes.

The ones that do open their doors (whenever they do) will be operating under very changed “rules of engagement.” Social distancing requires that people remain six feet apart, that they wear masks, and that they take all precautions to avoid sharing any possible infection with others. That’s a tall order for a planetarium or a hands-on science museum. Probably also true for art galleries, too. It may well nigh be impossible for some facilities to achieve. And, so they could remain closed.

I’ve worked for years in and out of domes and science centers, on fulldome shows and exhibitions. So, I keep tabs on what my colleagues are thinking and doing. Many are friends and people I care about. We all share common goals of bringing the wonder of science to visitors.

When the closures began, many of us hopped online to socialize and discuss the aspects of the shutdowns. We bond via social media, on Zoom, and in other online spots. The overwhelming question we’re all asking isn’t different from what everyone wants to know about other public places: “when will we (collective “we”) reopen?”

The answers are not easy. School facilities may not reopen until their schools do, and some schools aren’t opening until this fall or next spring. Others may not utilize their planetariums for quite some time. Same with university domes. With some colleges and universities delaying the full implementation of “in-person” classes either til fall or next spring, it could be a while before some of those domes reopen.

Reopening the Darkened Domes and Museums

There are a great many variables that complicate a re-opening effort. Social distancing and masking are just two of them. How do staff members keep safe, especially if they will be dealing with the public daily? Who cleans the exhibits and the theaters? How do facilities sell tickets safely? How many people can safely fit in a gallery or a dome? Will schools want to send field trips to museums like they used to? If so, when? What’s an institution’s liability if someone comes in with the virus and spreads it around? If they’re asymptomatic, how would anyone know? Not everyone has a fever at first, for example.

To be sure, the science of understanding this virus is incomplete—and, it mutates. We’re just now finding out that it can badly affect children. In the early days, it seemed like kids were more immune than older adults. Now, we know they can sustain damage that will last their whole lives. As long as the virus keeps spreading, that may well affect people’s attitudes about going back to museums and science centers. And so, that leads to the question, “what if we reopen and nobody comes in?” It’s a real fear.

Yes, reopening institutions is important, for sound educational reasons. In addition, institutions have budgets, and those budgets are now severely challenged as revenue streams dry up. I read an article last month that perhaps a third of institutions may not reopen this year, or ever, for a variety of reasons. That’s a huge cultural, scientific, and educational loss to any country that supports the educational and cultural activities that these places provide us.

When Will People Come Back?

People at planetariums, science centers, museums, and other such facilities look to each other, their institutions, and surveys, to figure out when they can reopen. For the past couple of months, researcher Colleen Dilsenschneider has been surveying “audience intent” to find out when people might be interested in heading back to museums and other similar cultural institutions. Her report shared on May 11, showed at least a positive upturn in people’s intentions to return sometime within one to three months of this calendar year. In weeks prior to that, the intentions were less certain.

One to three months is a long time to wait for visitors. It’s hard to say when planetariums and science centers will be open again. And, it will be the same long wait for art museums, festivals, and other cultural activities that enrich our lives.

In some places, facilities won’t be reopening as fast as, say, tattoo parlors, bars, and other places that protestors want to see reopen NOW. And, wouldn’t it be cool if protestors could say, “I want the museum and planetarium to open up!”?

I know of one major facility that opened this week, but with hugely restricted activities designed to keep people safe. Their planetarium won’t open until midsummer at earliest. A thriving community of places where we learn about the world and universe is, sadly, shining ghost lights in the darkness for the unforeseeable future

I wish the news were better about our science centers and planetariums. These are hugely important places for people to visit, learn, and enjoy themselves. But, the bigger, more important issue still faces us as COVID-19 continues to race through the population: that we learn to stay home, stay safe, and wait for the day that we can all go out and enjoy our cultural and scientific institutions again.

Before we can do that, populations around the world where the virus is still rampant have bigger fish to fry: fixing supply chain problems, teaching their politicians that this virus should be taken seriously and not as a political football to sway voters to risky choices, and making sure that all who need them have food, medical care, and safe places to recover. We’re all in this together, each experiencing it in different ways. Maybe there’s a lesson in that that we’ll need to learn before we can extinguish the ghost lights and bring life back to domes, theaters, museums, and concert halls.

Galaxies are fascinating places to explore. They have been around since nearly the beginning of the universe, are home to stars, planets, and other objects. When astronomers look at galaxies, with observatories such as Hubble Space Telescope, they might see star formation regions. They can also observe areas of star death. Many galaxies have black holes, particularly at their cores. And, of course, many stars in galaxies have planets or disks of material in which planets can form. In short, they present fascinating collections of telescope targets to study.

One famous galaxy has even changed our perception of the universe. Another one showed us how much a telescope could be improved. The first happened when astronomer Edwin P. Hubble began studying the Andromeda Galaxy in the 1920s. In 1924, as he observed it, he saw a variable star in one of its spiral arms and took images. Then, he calculated the distance to the galaxy using the period of the star’s brightening and dimming. It was a simple thing to do, but the results reverberated through the astronomy community like a shock wave. And, it forced astronomers to expand their understanding of the size of the universe.

Eventually, astronomy came to grips with the idea of an expanding universe. Astronomers found that galaxies were, indeed, stellar cities of their own. Up until Hubble’s work, they strongly suggested that these fluffy-looking spiral “nebulae” were probably part of our own Milky Way. Hubble’s work changed that forever. In addition, it altered our understanding of the age and extent of the universe.

So, of course, the telescope named after Edwin P. Hubble, the Hubble Space Telescope, has done some of its finest work when looking at galaxies. Whether it’s one galaxy, such as Andromeda, or millions of them (as in the various Deep Field studies it has done), HST regularly cranks out highly detailed views of them.

Hubble Space Telescope’s Grand View of a Grand Design Galaxy

Galaxy M100 has also taught us some lessons. Yesterday, I showed a pic of M100 as the telescope saw it with spherical aberration. Next to it was another one after one of the cameras was outfitted with corrective optics to sharpen the view. Each image of M100 that we’ve seen shows how the venerable and still-flying Hubble Space Telescope has improved.

Hubble turned to look at M100 again after it had an even better camera installed, the Wide Field Camera 3. It was put into the telescope during the last servicing mission in 2009, and almost immediately astronomers turned to M100 to get a better view.

Astronomers have long referred to the shape of M100 as a “grand design” galaxy. That’s because it has very obvious spiral arms (two of them!). In the outer regions of the two arms, we can see massive clouds of blue stars. Their presence also makes M100 a starburst galaxy. The region around the core is also blazing with newborn stars. The brownish dust lanes mark regions where stars could form in the future. The core of the galaxy is packed with older stars.

Hubble’s view of M100 resolves individual stars throughout most of this galaxy. Over the years, it has identified Cepheid variables within its arms. Cepheids are stars that vary in a predictable period of time. They have been used to establish cosmic distances since Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovered the period-luminosity relation (in 1908). She came up with that relation by charting their brightening and dimming cycles.

Edwin Hubble used her work to deduce the distance of the Andromeda Galaxy using the Cepheid variable he observed. As I mentioned above, his work showed astronomers that the universe is much larger than they thought at the time. It also gave them a way to more accurately measure distances between galaxies. Other fundamental discoveries about distance and the expansion rate of the universe have flowed from Hubble’s work.

Hubble Views Hubble’s Cepheid: Var!

In May 2011, Hubble Space Telescope turned its gaze toward the galaxy that had so fascinated its namesake. The Andromeda Galaxy is another grand design spiral, and the closest one to our own Milky Way. It lies some 2.5 million light-years away, and it’s moving toward us on a collision course. The 2011 view of Andromeda showed the Cepheid variable star that Hubble measured. It also revealed incredibly sharp images of individual stars. HST’s image gives remarkable insight into Andromeda, which is the only spiral galaxy we can see with the naked eye.

I especially like the comparison view below. It shows a remarkable ground-based view of Andromeda Galaxy, coupled with an inset made by HST (upper right). Edwin P. Hubble’s marked-up plate (lower right) shows the 1924 observation that led to his remarkable discovery. It really shows us how far astronomy has come since Hubble’s day. And, it’s all thanks to his namesake on orbit around Earth.