| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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Here At The Academy The Reluctant Astronomer
A person in search of the chairman of the planetarium might expect to find him poring over astronomy journals or gazing up through a giant telescope on a clear night. But Steve Craig is more likely to be caught with his sleeves rolled up in the Academy’s instrument shop. Since he came to the Academy in 1960 as a planetarium technician, he has crept up through the ranks until he became chairman in 1984. So it may not be much of a surprise that the mechanically-minded Craig has turned to technology, one of his favorite topics, to revolutionize the planetarium’s shows. In 1989, he and his crew installed an automated system to control the starry patterns of the dome, which sent the planetarium’s potential for shows and special effects sky high. The new system freed the lecturer from the switchboard and allowed the planetarium more versatility. During his nearly two decades at the planetarium’s helm, Craig shortened the planetarium shows from an hour to 40 minutes—to fit most people’s attention span better and to accommodate up to five shows a day. And with the time and technology to put on more shows, the planetarium has become much more accommodating to the school groups that head to the academy each year. “The school show program we have now is 100 times better than what we had in 1960,” Craig says. At that time, the planetarium lecturer had to estimate the average age of his listeners, and then guess at what kind of presentation to give.Now, five shows match up with what kids are learning from preschool to high school. “So when they’re studying the moon and the sun, we have a show about them. When they’re studying the planets, we have a show about planets,” he says. Craig’s own school days were filled not with stars, but cars. As a teenager, he bought cars, took them apart, and put them back together. “I’ve had probably 100 to 150 cars, something like that,” he says. “Some of them I only had for a few months, some of them I’ve had for years.” His interest in how things work is what pulled him into his first job at the planetarium. When he started, he built projectors that splashed stars, planets and rockets across the planetarium’s dome. He still has the three-dimensional mind of a machinist. “I can see all these pieces in my mind as a unit and how they move,” Craig says, circling his hands around each other like gears. “And things that I haven’t seen for twenty years I can still picture.” Craig’s journey through the planetarium has been, at times, reluctant. The first time he was offered the chairman’s job, he turned it down, thinking that the person who ran the planetarium should be an astronomer. When the job opened up again, it was harder to refuse. “They decided since I was already here, and already doing it, that was the easiest road,” he says with a laugh. “But to this day I think it’s a bit of a handicap that, although I’ve had some courses in astronomy, most of my knowledge is just from being around a bunch of astronomers.” But this hasn’t hindered Craig, who won the distinguished service award from the Academy Fellows in 1991, a group that rarely honors non-scientists. Under his aegis, the planetarium has sponsored a wealth of new programs, and offered increasingly complex and more numerous star shows. When it comes to keeping the stars whirling above the dome’s silhouetted San Francisco skyline, Craig shifts the credit to his coworkers. “There’s a great staff in the planetarium, and they come up with the ideas,” he says. Craig and his crew instituted the Dean Lecture Series, inviting astronomers from the Bay Area and around the world to speak on topics such as cosmology, planets, and their research. “Most of these people are talking about something that, in many cases, they’ve not yet even published. So it’s really fresh information,” Craig says. The planetarium and its fabled star projector—which, when first built, was the most advanced in the world—have been enlightening audiences since 1952. On November 8th, the planetarium will celebrate its 50th anniversary. In the works is a show to take the viewer through the Morrison’s half-century of service, from the creation of the star projector to plans for the future of the new planetarium. Show prices may also be a blast from the past, with a rollback to the 1952 ticket price of 74 cents. Craig now spends more time in his office and away from his beloved star projectors than he’d like. He plans to be on hand to guide the planetarium through the Academy’s 150th anniversary celebration next year. But after all the hoopla, when planetarium audiences fall quiet again as the sky darkens overhead, the chairman hopes be able to spend more quality time tinkering with the real star in his life—a 1932 Ford Coupe. Cameron Walker is an intern at California Wild. |
