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1103-UnionStation-0198
Photo by Joe Sands (My favorite from the day!)
Photo by Joe Sands (My favorite from the day!)
Well, now that 7 Days is done for the spring round, normal blog posting can commence and you can see less of my mug. Ok, maybe a couple more shots of my mug now and then, but just a couple today with the back drop of Union Station to distract you. (And taken by Joe, so that's better!) Just look at that stunning Beaux-Arts 1900's architecture. Wow.
Photo by Joe Sands
But let me get back to why we were out at this lovely building on a cloudy gray Sunday in the first place. Two weeks ago now, Joe and I spent an historical and interplanetary afternoon bumming around Union Station. #44 on the Bravely Obey in Action list just happens to be "Attend a show at a local planetarium." So we did. And we also spent a solid hour just wandering around and taking photographs of this spectacularly renovated Kansas City classic.
Visiting the Arvin Gottlieb Planetarium and taking in a show was exactly what I wanted and expected. The planetarium experience is pretty terrific. I have always been a stargazing kind of girl. Fascinated by the mythology of the constellations, curious about the sparkling dark sky and yet entirely lacking in the necessary passion for math required to pass an astronomy course. One of my favorite high school science memories was crawling through the tunnel of the inflatable planetarium dome that traveled from school to school. It sat, enormous and gray, pulsating lightly with the air that kept it standing upright, plopped in the middle of the library. We climbed down the short tunnel, sat in a circle or leaned back on our elbows in the pitch black until the image of the night sky was suddenly projected all around us. It was mesmerizing. And the Gottlieb show was even more so. The screen was enormous, 360 degrees with 155 seats, all tilted back and filled with an eager audience. We took the 45 minute Solar System tour, fascinating, detailed and yet general enough to not overwhelm young viewers. My eyes were a bit overwhelmed though, I kept trying to process all of the movement on the edge of my vision and it made me slightly nauseous. I had to keep stopping myself from trying to see everything, because it's impossible. We traveled to every planet, moons, and just beyond our vast solar system. And tried to ignore the teenage couple sitting two seats over who seemed to be devouring each others' faces during the entire show. Young galactic love.
I really enjoyed the show and it was totally worth the $6 ticket price. But it was short. Too short. And sadly at this point I've gotten spoiled by the sharp detail of our high def TV and I'm used to seeing everything with this clarity that would have shocked me ten years ago. So it makes the planetarium show slightly less stunning because of the fuzzy quality of the film. Not bad or distracting, it just left me wishing I could see the whole thing in perfect HD. And then what did I stumble upon on my one of my favorite sites? This glorious photographic animation of Saturn. Try to picture this on an immense 360 degree screen. Ah.
5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.
Photo by Joe Sands
Photo by Joe Sands
After our 45 minute tour of the universe, we took ourselves on a little local photographic tour. Each of us armed with a camera, we wandered and shot and gazed and lingered and had a great slow afternoon spent appreciating this building. Union Station opened in 1914 and was a bustling hub of travelers and activity until the late 1950's.
