And that's OK with Willmitch. This is where you come to turn your mind on, not turn it off. Instead, the ISU planetarium offers an intimate and family-friendly form of entertainment that is hard to find elsewhere, he said. This is one of the few entertainments where you can talk and interact. Besides, it's a cheap date.
Visitors listen to the stories while looking at slides and the stars on the inside of the dome.
Whether it's connecting the stars into constellations or visualizing the stories behind them, the visitors have to rely on their imaginations. It is like sitting around a campfire and telling stories. Last Thursday was a typical day around Willmitch's electronic campfire nestled under the white dome in Felmley Hall at the corner of School Street and College Avenue. With the children and chaperones settled into the three concentric rings of padded benches, Willmitch began his well-practiced patter, explaining the planetarium and the finer points of stargazing. As the slides came and went in sequence with the recorded soundtrack, the youngsters occasionally nudged each other and pointed so no one missed a thing.