The University of Colorado at Boulder's Fiske Planetarium will celebrate its 30th anniversary on Sept. 24 with a gala beginning at 6 p.m. in the planetarium.
The event will include dinner, a live jazz concert under the planetarium dome and a look at the past and future of the planetarium by director Doug Duncan and others from CU-Boulder's astrophysical and planetary sciences department.
Advance tickets are $60 for the full evening of events, $50 for members of the group Friends of CU Astronomy and $30 for the concert only. Tickets at the door are $70 for the full evening and $35 for the concert only. Mounted and framed prints of Hubble Space Telescope images and other items will be on sale throughout the event. Proceeds from the ticket and image sales will be used to fund a new initiative at the planetarium.
"The goal is to expand Fiske Planetarium's lobby into Boulder's newest hands-on science museum," Duncan said. "The unifying theme of the exhibits will be to help visitors understand how astronomers use invisible light -- radio waves, microwaves, infrared and ultraviolet light -- to view the heavens."
The exhibit will include signs in English and Spanish, according to Suzanne Traub-Metlay, education programs manager at Fiske Planetarium.
Speakers at the Sept. 24 event also will include Professor Emeritus J. McKim Malville, former chair of the astrophysical and planetary sciences department, and James Green, the department's current chair.
Vocalist Cherilynn Morrow, who also is director of education and public outreach at Boulder's Space Science Institute, and pianist Paul Cotugno will present AstroJazz. The program combines astronomy and music, and includes original and standard jazz tunes in concert with astronomical imagery and visual effects.
Fiske Planetarium opened to the public in fall 1975 at a cost of $1.68 million. Wallace Franz Fiske, who graduated from CU-Boulder in 1917 with a bachelor's degree in history, funded the planetarium's construction with a gift to the university. Fiske, who died in 1966, gave most of his estate to the university on the condition that the money be used to build a planetarium.
Home to the largest planetarium dome between Los Angeles and Chicago, Fiske has about 25,000 visitors each year. The planetarium uses a Zeiss Mark VI projector to display images on its 65-foot dome. New seating and carpeting were installed in the planetarium following a water main break in 2003.
On Sept. 7, about 100 planetarium officials from the Western Alliance Conference of Planetariums, an annual meeting of planetarium organizations based in the western United States, will visit Fiske for a tour. They will have the opportunity to see the technologies and techniques Fiske uses during live presentations, Duncan said. Gates Planetarium at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science is hosting the conference, which runs Sept. 7-9.
For more information about Fiske Planetarium call (303) 492-5002 or visit the Web site at .