SF Unscripted
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SF Unscripted
SF Unscripted - James Albury
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Hear from James Albury, manager of the Kika Silva Pla Planetarium, the only planetarium in North Florida.
Transcript
00:00:06 Mark Barley
Welcome to Santa Fe Unscripted, the podcast that brings you the behind-the-scenes
stories of Santa Fe College. I'm your host, Mark Barley. Let's dive in. All right, welcome
back to Santa Fe Unscripted. I'm your host, Mark Barley. And today's episode, I'm joined by
Santa Fe College Planetarium Manager, James Albury. James, welcome in.
00:00:26 James Albury
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
00:00:30 Mark Barley
What's going on in your neck of the woods currently?
00:00:35 James Albury
Okay, so we are now ending the school year as far as the public and private schools. So
we're going to be shifting gears as far as how our daily routine goes. But our planetarium, if
you've never been there, we are.
00:00:52 Mark Barley
I have. been there.
00:00:54 James Albury
Yeah, we are going to be celebrating our 20th anniversary of our dedication this coming
September. So I'll tell you a little history, if that's okay, of our planetarium. So
00:01:04 James Albury
Our planetarium is named the Kika Silva Pla Planetarium, and it was the original vision of
one of our astronomy professors, Dr. Sally Hoffman. And she and Professor Emeritus Dr.
Howard Cohen over at the University of Florida, they had the vision of Gainesville having a
planetarium. Because most people who wanted to visit a planetarium from Gainesville,
they had to go all the way to Jacksonville or down to Orlando or Tampa. So
00:01:29 James Albury
She and Dr. Cohen approached UF about getting a planetarium on the UF campus, but
they had a lot of trouble getting support and funding. So she kind of sat on the idea for
several years. And then in 1997, when Santa Fe College was awarded funds to build theNatural Sciences Building, she thought, that would be our opportunity to go ahead and
have a planetarium in Gainesville, because there are community colleges that have
planetariums. So she drew one into the plan during their faculty collaboration, and they
presented it to the president, the board of trustees, everyone liked the idea.
00:01:59 James Albury
So they built the planetarium as part of the annex for the X building, the natural sciences
building. Now, unfortunately, the funding nightmare never ended because when the
college had applied for an educational grant to buy all the equipment, and unfortunately,
that grant fell through. So all we had in the planetarium at the time was a dome and chairs.
We had no equipment or anything like that. So the building sat empty for almost five years.
Wow. Yeah, so fortunately, John Pla and his wifey, Amy Howard, they
00:02:28 James Albury
they had been friends of the college for quite some time. And they had heard of the plight of
the college. And they had a lunch with Dr. Curtis Jefferson at the time. And during lunch,
they were talking about the planetarium. And they decided, well, we could go ahead and
make a donation and help you get the planetarium completed. And Congressman Cliff
Stearns, he was also able to get educational funding for us as well.
00:02:53 James Albury
So when you donate a lot of money to a college, they name something after you, usually
the building. So the Pla family insisted they name it in honor of his mother, Kika Silva Pla.
And her nickname was Kika, her real name was Maria, but Kika had been her nickname
since she was.
00:03:11 Mark Barley
Kika's a lot cooler.
00:03:12 James Albury
Of course it makes people wonder, well, what is a Kika Silva Pla?
00:03:18 James Albury
But it's a person.
00:03:19 Mark Barley
In the lobby of the planetarium, there's a picture of her.
00:03:24 James AlburyAnd we have a, and when I first saw the name of the planetarium, because planetarium
begins with the same 3 letters, Pla, and I thought, I wonder if they ran out of room on the
first one, they decided to write it on the second line. No, that Pla is a actual last name. So,
but yeah, and I got to meet Mrs. Pla when she visited for her 89th birthday.
00:03:46 James Albury
And I still have a picture of that gathering on the wall in my office. And one of the things that
we do as a treat for our future visitors from that point onward is when Mrs. Pla visited us,
we used one of our projectors. It's A first generation Godo Kronos. It's an optical
mechanical projector and it projects 8,000 stars on the dome. And I can set the date to any
date in history and set it to any location on Earth.
00:04:12 James Albury
So we took her to Curacochile where she was born and showed her what the sky looked
like on November 16th, 1920. Wow. Yeah.
00:04:20 Mark Barley
So what was her reaction to that?
00:04:22 James Albury
Oh, she liked it a lot. She liked being able to see the stars when she was born.
00:04:27 Mark Barley
That's awesome. Imagine giving
00:04:28 Mark Barley
all this money and I don't actually know. Do you know how much money they actually gave
towards the planetarium?
00:04:34 James Albury
I believe so. The foundation would have the exact number, but they gave enough that we
were able to buy new seats, a larger dome, carpeting, and also it contributed to the
projectors that we have, the Kronos projector and so forth.
00:04:48 Mark Barley
So can you imagine giving money towards something and then after it's completed, sitting
in it, staring at a dome,
00:04:58 Mark BarleyAnd the money you donated went towards a device that can kind of transport you in time.
00:05:05 James Albury
How cool is that? is really good. The Santa Fe College Foundation has been very good. And
the college has also been, I feel we've been blessed that we're in a community where
00:05:16 James Albury
the educational institution where our planetarium is values our planetarium because I
have a lot of colleagues that other planetariums will like for example, when COVID
happened, they just had to shut down because they just didn't have the funding or the
financial support from the community. But fortunately for us, the college, they have
continued to add to
00:05:38 James Albury
We were able to add programming. We were able to update our equipment. As things
obsolesce, we were able to replace them. So, and with the planetarium's 20th anniversary
coming up soon, we're entering into a capital campaign to go ahead and have a, I guess
you could say, corporate partnerships opportunities as well as individuals. And we're
thinking of maybe even having a membership where people can be members, like, oh, they
can over at the zoo.
00:06:05 James Albury
That will help to purchase planetarium shows and help support STEM education for
students and the community and create a meaningful, family-friendly community impact.
00:06:13 Mark Barley
That's awesome. So you mentioned the foundation just briefly there. How are they
supporting your endeavors kind of on the day-to-day, whether it be in the semester or the
academic year? How does the foundation support what the planetarium is doing
00:06:35 Mark Barley
consistently.
00:06:36 James Albury
Okay, so one of the things that I've enjoyed with my relationship with Santa Fe Foundation
is that they provide funding so that we can stay in step with the college's mission of adding
value to the lives of our community members and also providing educational
opportunities. Because planetariums are very unique environments. It's almost like a00:07:00 James Albury
Chuck Clemens used to call it a learning laboratory where you can actually go in and
experience space without having to go all the way out into space to actually experience it.
And there are a lot of concepts in astronomy, particularly coordinate astronomy, that's very
helpful to see it in three dimensions in the theater rather than looking at a textbook. So we
have a lot of our professors for the various classes
00:07:24 James Albury
They visit the planetarium, the astronomy class. We also have the natural sciences, earth
science classes. But we also have other disciplines such as the fine arts, music, the music
appreciation classes. They visit us because we have a show called Gustav Hulst, the
Planets that I'll probably talk about later on in this.
00:07:42 James Albury
in our podcast, but where they can actually listen to the entire recastal suite, the planets,
and we use our planetarium software to fly us to each of the planets. And that's been a very
popular show. We've had it now for, oh gosh, 11 years. Because Beholt High School, they
were the ones who originally approached us about it because their marching band that
year was playing
00:08:04 James Albury
Gustav Holst the Planets as part of the marching band competition and they needed a
fundraiser. So they'd contacted us saying, you know, since planets are a thing you do, is
there a way you can help us raise funds so our band can go to this competition? I said,
well, I do have a copy of Gustav Holst the Planets on CD and we do have a license to be
able to play it. So what we could do is you'll rent out the theater and then
00:08:26 James Albury
we can play a few movements like Mars, Jupiter, so forth. And I'll use our planetary
software to fly us to each of the planets that he wrote a song about. And then it was so
popular that we decided to make it a permanent show. So I pre-programmed all of my
movements and so forth into the computer so we'll do them each time we go through the
show. And I did one for every planet, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and
Neptune.
00:08:53 James AlburyWe don't visit Earth because he didn't write a song for Earth. And we don't visit Pluto
because Pluto wasn't discovered yet. And when it was discovered, he didn't feel like writing
a song for it.
00:09:00 Mark Barley
Who cares about Pluto?
00:09:02 James Albury
Well, a lot of people do. You'd be surprised. Yeah, Pluto is a lot of people's favorite dwarf
planet. Yeah. So, but yeah, anyway, so that has been a way that we can engage with the
community. And the foundation has been very supportive. They've set aside funding to help
us purchase new planetarium shows.
00:09:22 James Albury
and upgrade our equipment and so forth. So that plus what the college gives us on an
annual basis and revenue that we collect, because we are a revenue stream for the college
as well. It's been very, very helpful to us being able to help the college
00:09:41 Mark Barley
achieve their mission and vision for the community.
00:09:48 Mark Barley
departments at the college, right? You think about the zoo and that's another one that's
outward facing. It draws in a lot of visitors, educates the community. Your department is
another one that's very similar in that aspect. So let's go back in time, right? Let's take your
projector and go back to when you were a kid and how you got started appreciating
00:10:16 Mark Barley
what you're doing now, and I guess maybe just science in general.
00:10:20 James Albury
Okay, so 4,000 years ago when I was born, no, I first visited a planetarium. I grew up in
Miami, Florida. I first visited a planetarium when I was probably about six years old. And my
parents took me to planetarium and didn't know what to expect.
00:10:34 James Albury
But I remember when I walked into the theater, I'd never been in a building that looked like
that before. And I still see that light in young people's eyes when they come into ourplanetarium for the first time. It's like, wow, this room has a really high ceiling and it's
circular and it's got chairs like a movie theater. But there was this big machine in the
middle of the room and it looked like a dumbbell. And when the lights went off and the
machine started moving, I felt like I was moving among the stars. I said, this is really neat.
And I liked it. So my parents took me to the planetarium
00:11:04 James Albury
several times, and I saw a show called Child of the Universe. It was one that the director of
that planetarium, Jack Horkheimer, had made. And I'll tell you a little bit about Jack
Horkheimer a little bit. He was a very popular science communicator in the Miami area at
the time, and he was our executive director of our planetarium. And the premise of the
show was that the more we learn about the universe, the more insignificant it can make us
feel. And
00:11:33 James Albury
The takeaway from the show is that you should really feel very precious because we are in
a way in the center of the universe. We're in the middle between the macrocosm, which is
the immensity of the universe, and the microcosm, which is the very, very small. Like for
example, if you could see all the atoms in a kitchen table and each atom was the size of a
grain of sand, an ordinary kitchen table would be about 2,000 miles wide. So
00:12:01 James Albury
when you think of how small things are and how big things are, and we're kind of in the
middle somewhere.
00:12:07 Mark Barley
I've seen the movie Ant-Man. I know.
00:12:09 James Albury
Yeah. And honey, I shrunk the kids. But yeah, I was so inspired by that. I actually went up to
the person who was operating the machine that day and asked, how does a person get to
do what you do for a living? And I feel that is the most important question I ever asked
someone, other than my wife, will you marry me? But
00:12:31 James Albury
When I asked him that question, it led us into a conversation and he eventually invited me
to become an apprentice at that planetarium because there were other apprentices who
were teenagers like myself. I was about 13 at the time and I was a volunteer at first. Andwhile I was there, they taught me how to operate the machine. They taught me more of my
constellations because in Miami, you can't practice your constellations because we have
so many streetlights that washes them all out. But
00:12:59 James Albury
And I got to see how a planetarium operates. So when I turned 15, they hired me as a
console operator, where I got to operate the machine solo. And I was kind of in charge of
the planetarium for the day.
00:13:14 Mark Barley
And those machines at the time were a lot bigger than they are today, right?
00:13:16 James Albury
Yeah, they're yeah. Now they're the newest planetarium projector that Goto makes is
called the
00:13:25 James Albury
There was Orpheus, that would be the one that we would use. And then there's Aetherian.
Aetherian is about the size of a basketball, maybe a little bit bigger than a basketball. You
could actually put it in a suitcase and carry it on an airplane. And then you can put it in a
theater and it will put stars on the dome like.
00:13:42 Mark Barley
Have you ever tried to carry a planetarium through TSA?
00:13:47 James Albury
No, but I do know people who have done that. But they usually ship that stuff ahead of time
if they're going to a conference.
00:13:55 James Albury
But anyway, that was, I worked at the Miami Space Transit Planetarium from when I was 15
till I was about 20. And then when I came to the University of Florida, I was going to study
aerospace engineering at the time. But then I switched from engineering to astronomy and
physics so I could direct a planetarium one day because I really liked it so much because I
worked at the Miami Planetarium when Halley's Comet came by.
00:14:20 James AlburySo I got to see how a major planetarium deals with a significant astronomical event. And
that helped me a lot, I believe, over the last few years, because we've had solar eclipses,
we've had lunar eclipses, we've had transits of Mercury, transits of Venus, all during the 16
years I've been our manager. And being able to see how they engage the community, it
helps me to help engage our community. Because right after I started working here,
00:14:48 James Albury
I got a phone call from TV20 and they said, hi, we heard you're the new director of our
planetarium in town and we heard there's a meteor shower coming up. Can we send a film
crew to come over and record an interview with you for the news tonight? I'm like, oh wow,
okay, cool. So as soon as I finished my interview, I called Jack Horkheimer on the phone
because he was not only still the director of the planetarium Miami, but he was part of our
advisory committee for the planetarium here at Santa Fe College. And I called him on the
phone and said,
00:15:18 James Albury
Jack, I just had a Horkheimer moment. And he said, we know KO Pectate will take care of
that for you. No, sir, not that. But he said, well, now that you are the director of the
planetarium in Gainesville, you are the go-to person for the media because even though
you have a university in town, they may not be as adept at communicating the really
complex things to
00:15:45 James Albury
the general public because they're used to being in a classroom and being a researcher. So
they might go off on a tangent and talk about stuff that goes right over everyone's head. So I
have to always remember, okay, keep it on a level that I can comfortably tell, talk to my
parents about or my kids. So, but
00:16:09 James Albury
Anyway, experiencing all of that really helped to prepare me for our community. And I have
enjoyed what I do a tremendous amount. People tell me that, yeah, we can see that you
enjoy your job.
00:16:20 Mark Barley
Yeah.
00:16:21 James AlburyWell, a friend of mine told me when she retired when I was working at the University of
Florida years ago, she said, you know, if you can find something that you really enjoy doing
and have people pay you to do it, you won't really feel like you're working. So I said, okay, I
will take that. Yeah, I still
00:16:38 James Albury
I feel very blessed.
00:16:39 Mark Barley
Yeah, it's and anybody that's ever met you feels that, right? I think that. I think you exude
that kind of enthusiasm about space. I mean, I remember just passing you in the
concourses out here at Santa Fe and we'll just be talking and you'll be like, oh, hey, did you
see that? That's the star that was in the Northwest, you know, section of that was Mars.
And I'm like,
00:17:06 Mark Barley
Cool, James. I didn't even say anything about Mars, right? But it's that type of engagement
that I think brings out the community, right? It's that infectious, and that's that ripple effect.
And there's times we talk about positive ripples of education. And I think you're somebody
that embodies that positive ripple is because you're an educator, right? I mean, when you
boil it down, you're an educator.
00:17:36 Mark Barley
but you also make the things that you're educating others about fun. And you make it to
where it doesn't go over your head. It doesn't, I'm not bored by what you're talking about.
It's because you know how to relay the information. So speaking of communicating the
knowledge to the masses, can you talk a little bit about your public facing, you have a
YouTube series, you have a PBS series,
00:18:06 Mark Barley
Can you talk about that?
00:18:07 Mark Barley
and how you got into that and is it still going? Is it still a thing? Tell us a little bit about that.
00:18:13 James Albury
Okay, so when I was about nine years old, there was a show that Jack Horkheimer started
doing on PBS called Star Hustler. And it was a nightly show that they would show for likemaybe 5 minutes just as they were about to sign off. It usually came on right after Doctor
Who on PBS. But it was a local show and he would go on and tell us what's going on in the
night sky.
00:18:32 James Albury
And that show was very popular for a long time. But in the late 90s, when the internet came
along, they had to change the name because when people would type in search engines to
find Star Hustler, search engines were not bringing back family-friendly stuff. So they
changed the name to Stargazers or Stargazer. So that was his show. And Jack hosted the
show for almost,
00:18:58 James Albury
about 35 maybe. It was for quite a while, but then Jack passed away. So they, and the show
had gone national. So by this time, everybody was familiar with Jack Horkheimer. He was
up there with Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye. But when he died, they had
guest hosts on the show. And
00:19:24 James Albury
I contacted one of my old colleagues at the planetarium, Bill De Shong. He was the
executive producer of the Stargazers TV show. I said, hey, how do I get to be a guest host?
Because I notice you've had several guest hosts. I wouldn't mind trying it. And they said,
sure, do you have an audition type tape that you can send us? So I sent one of the
interviews I'd done with TV20 about a lunar eclipse that had happened a few months
earlier.
00:19:51 James Albury
So they liked it. And then I did the episodes for, I think it was April of 2011 was my first aired
episode. And we would go down to Miami and I would record for the whole day. We'd do
like 2 months worth of episodes at one time. And that was a lot of fun. So Dean Regas, who
eventually was my colleague on the show, we would alternate back and forth. He would do
2 months. I would do 2 months. And
00:20:20 James Albury
people liked the two of us, so they decided to pair us together and they changed the name
to Star Gazers.
00:20:25 James AlburyAnd also Marlene Hidalgo, she was an educator in Miami and the three of us would host
the show together.
00:20:32 James Albury
Then after a couple of years, Marlene and her family moved to the New Jersey area.
00:20:38 James Albury
So it was just Dean and I for the remainder of the time.
00:20:40 James Albury
And Dean and I hosted that show together for about 9 years.
00:20:44 James Albury
And it was really a lot of fun being able to kind of
00:20:50 James Albury
do what I saw Jack Horkheimer do when I was little and now I was the Jack Horkheimer on
TV.
00:20:56 James Albury
And my mom, she finally saw me on TV.
00:21:00 James Albury
And she said, oh my gosh, I just saw you on TV.
00:21:02 James Albury
Had I gone to the bathroom, I would have missed it because it was very short.
00:21:06 James Albury
I think she was like one of the one minute versions.
00:21:08 James Albury
We used to do one minute and five minutes.
00:21:10 James Albury
So
00:21:12 James AlburyAnd because of all this, I've had opportunities to speak around the world and I've given
presentations and talks around the country about science communication and the
opportunities and so forth.
00:21:27 James Albury
So when our time, Dean and I had ended with the Stargazers program, I said, I really
enjoyed doing that.
00:21:34 James Albury
So I started my own YouTube channel called The Sky Above Us.
00:21:37 James Albury
And my website, theskyaboveus.org, you have access to previous episodes and you can
even get merchandise, like a t-shirt or a refrigerator magnet, something like that.
00:21:49 James Albury
But it's also, I found it's a way to help advertise Santa Fe College because I
00:21:55 James Albury
tell them where I'm a director and I do all the editing myself.
00:21:59 James Albury
Our media studio here at Santa Fe College, they help record it for me and they have the
green screen and everything that I do all the editing myself.
00:22:07 Mark Barley
Special shout out Lex in the producer.
00:22:11 James Albury
Thank you, Lex.
00:22:11 James Albury
Thank you, Steve.
00:22:12 James Albury
Thank you, Dagan and all the other people who have helped us over the last seven years.
00:22:16 James AlburyYeah, I'm in my 7th season now.
00:22:18 James Albury
So and one of the things that I really enjoy about that show is I get to talk about the night
sky
00:22:24 James Albury
But there's so many celestial events that are happening that a lot of us don't even know
about.
00:22:29 James Albury
So for example, at the beginning of every year, I have an episode called Happy Whatever
the Year is, and I mention all the cool things that are happening that year, most of them.
00:22:37 James Albury
Meteor showers, close pairings of the planets where they'll appear near each other in the
sky, eclipses, yeah, meteor showers and stuff like that.
00:22:48 James Albury
So another thing that I'm excited about is this year,
00:22:53 James Albury
The eclipses happen in cycles.
00:22:55 James Albury
So you have six month cycles, almost six months, where you'll have a lunar eclipse and
right before or after two weeks, you'll have a solar eclipse.
00:23:03 James Albury
The moon's orbit is tilted by about 5 degrees with respect to the path that we have around
the sun.
00:23:08 James Albury
We call that the ecliptic in the sky.
00:23:10 James Albury
It's a path that the sun travels in the sky and the moon's orbit is tilted by about 5 degrees to
that.00:23:16 James Albury
So most of the time when the moon passes between us and the sun, it
00:23:20 James Albury
passes above the sign or below the sun, it doesn't go right in front of it.
00:23:25 James Albury
But twice a year, the moon is in the right spot at the right time and we call those
intersection points nodes.
00:23:31 James Albury
Well, when the moon is there and it's the right time, we get a solar eclipse and then two
weeks later when it's on the other side of the earth, when it's full, we get a lunar eclipse.
00:23:40 James Albury
Did I just say that?
00:23:41 James Albury
Right?
00:23:42 James Albury
Yeah, solar eclipse when it's new and lunar eclipse when it's full.
00:23:45 James Albury
Yeah.
00:23:46 James Albury
Anywho,
00:23:49 James Albury
Those nodes of intersection take 18 years to regress all the way around the sky one full
time.
00:23:55 James Albury
So 18 years from an eclipse, you'll get an identical eclipse.
00:23:59 James AlburyBut since Earth's rotation is not synchronized to that, you'll have a different eclipse in a
different location.
00:24:04 James Albury
Well, this year on August 12th, there's going to be a total solar eclipse.
00:24:09 James Albury
It'll be over Iceland and it'll go down to Spain.
00:24:11 James Albury
It'll have like a one minute totality.
00:24:13 James Albury
So it'll be dark outside for a minute.
00:24:16 James Albury
But 18 years from now, guess who gets a solar eclipse?
00:24:20 James Albury
Us.
00:24:21 James Albury
2045.
00:24:22 James Albury
So I want to talk, and I'm glad Lisa is listening, because I want to get with Marcom, our
marketing and communications team, to put together a graphic, because I'm going, in my
last few years before I finally retire, I've talked to our department chair.
00:24:43 James Albury
about going ahead and investing in eclipse viewers like we did for the previous solar eclipse
we had in 2017 and the one we had a few years ago and have it branded with the college's
branding the great Florida eclipse of 2045.
00:24:55 James Albury
And I wanted to get about 5,000 of them each year before I retire and I'm going to put them
in our storage for my successors.
00:25:03 James AlburyI don't know who those people are.
00:25:04 James Albury
They're probably still in high school or middle school, but you never know.
00:25:10 James Albury
so that they can distribute those to the community because that's one of the wonderful
things about the foundation and all the things the funding that people have given to us it
allows us to be able to do stuff like that and then share it with the community because we
were able to give out we were able to give eclipse of viewers to the community for free now
they might decide to charge for it but that eclipse when it gets to when it happens it'll be on
a Saturday afternoon
00:25:39 James Albury
And it's going to go from California, but when it gets to Florida, it's going to go over
Tallahassee, then Gainesville, it's going to go over Ocala, Orlando, down to Fort
Lauderdale, and over the Bahamas, over Bimini and Nassau.
00:25:48 James Albury
And it's going to go right over the Magic Kingdom.
00:25:51 James Albury
So you know they're going to charge a lot of money to get in that day.
00:25:55 James Albury
But we're going to be the busiest place in town because we are the only planetarium other
than the one in Sanford
00:26:01 James Albury
the Seminole State College Planetarium that's going to be on center line in this part of the
state.
00:26:06 James Albury
The planetarium Jacksonville, they're not at totality.
00:26:09 James Albury
They're like 98%.
00:26:10 James AlburyAnd then the ones in Tampa and St.
00:26:12 James Albury
Pete, they're at like 98%.
00:26:13 James Albury
But when you're at 100%, it goes dark.
00:26:16 James Albury
And the totality is going to be 5 minutes long.
00:26:18 James Albury
It's going to be the best solar eclipse of the 20th century.
00:26:21 James Albury
But I'll be retired, so I don't have to work it.
00:26:23 James Albury
But I want to leave a legacy for my successor so they'll
00:26:29 James Albury
Because eclipse viewers are probably going to be a lot more expensive in 18 years from
now.
00:26:36 James Albury
And they don't really wear out.
00:26:38 James Albury
I mean, we're going to keep them in storage so no one's playing with them and breaking
them.
00:26:42 James Albury
Right.
00:26:44 Mark Barley
That's, I mean, it's very, it's very cool because it's, you're forward thinking 20, almost 20
years out.
00:26:50 James AlburyYep, this job makes me do that.
00:26:51 James Albury
I'm thinking about all the eclipses because there's going to be a total solar eclipse over
Chichen Itza on September 23rd of 2071.
00:26:59 James Albury
I'll be 104.
00:27:00 James Albury
But my son will be in his early 60s.
00:27:02 James Albury
He'll just have turned 61 years old.
00:27:04 James Albury
And I said, hey, if I'm alive, we got to go see that because not only is it going to be at one of
the Maya city centers, but it's on September 23rd, which is an equinox day.
00:27:12 James Albury
And on the equinox day,
00:27:14 James Albury
the way the pyramid of Kukulkan is shaped, as the sun sets, it looks like there's a shadow
of a snake slithering down the northern staircase.
00:27:21 Mark Barley
Pretty sure I've seen the movie Apocalypto, and that's how the world ends, actually.
00:27:27 Mark Barley
I don't know if I'll be in that area for the eclipse.
00:27:33 James Albury
Well, you're young.
00:27:34 James Albury
You'll probably be in your 80s, maybe 90s.
00:27:39 Mark BarleyYeah.
00:27:39 Mark Barley
No, it's very, so it's very cool.
00:27:41 Mark Barley
So
00:27:42 Mark Barley
One last question, then we'll get into some rapid fire stuff.
00:27:48 Mark Barley
What does the planetarium need from the community moving forward, in your opinion?
00:27:54 James Albury
Well, I would like people to tell other people about the planetarium, because we do have a
fairly transient community in Gainesville.
00:28:03 James Albury
I would say that every 5 to 10 years, we have a complete recycling of
00:28:09 James Albury
people who live here, mostly college students who come to Santa Fe College and then go
to UF and then they leave.
00:28:15 James Albury
We do have what we used to call when I was a student, townies, people who actually were
born in Gainesville and grew up in Gainesville and live in Gainesville and they've been in
Gainesville all their lives.
00:28:24 James Albury
Transplants like myself who came from other cities or even other countries, they may only
be here for a few years and then leave.
00:28:32 James Albury
But it's helpful if you have visited the planetarium, tell your friends about it.
00:28:37 James AlburySay, hey,
00:28:38 James Albury
Did you know we have a planetarium?
00:28:40 James Albury
Because a lot of people don't realize we have a planetarium.
00:28:43 James Albury
They asked me, well, why doesn't UF have a planetarium?
00:28:45 James Albury
Because they're bigger.
00:28:46 James Albury
I said, well, UF is primarily a research institution.
00:28:49 James Albury
They didn't feel it was really the right time.
00:28:53 James Albury
But Santa Fe College said, yeah, we'll go ahead and do it for our community.
00:28:56 James Albury
And it's
00:28:59 James Albury
Yeah, it's been nice.
00:29:01 James Albury
So that's one way.
00:29:02 James Albury
And financial support too.
00:29:05 James Albury
There are ways that you can give specifically earmarked for the planetarium through Santa
Fe College's Foundation.00:29:11 James Albury
We have a giving portal and you can choose to give directly to the planetarium in any
amount.
00:29:20 James Albury
$5, $10, $10,000 if you want to.
00:29:22 James Albury
if you give $10,000 to a planetarium, we'll actually get a planetarium show and put your
name on it.
00:29:27 James Albury
It's like, hey, this was provided for by so-and-so or such and such company.
00:29:34 James Albury
So I think that that's.
00:29:37 Mark Barley
I mean, those are the big ways, right?
00:29:39 Mark Barley
It's word of mouth and then it's financial support.
00:29:42 Mark Barley
It's because your planetarium, and I say your planetarium, the Santa Fe College
Planetarium is meant for the community.
00:29:51 Mark Barley
And it's meant for people to come and learn about it.
00:29:53 Mark Barley
And hopefully you have impacted another young James Albury, you know, down in Miami to
00:30:03 Mark Barley
be this lifelong learner of all things outside of planet Earth.
00:30:10 Mark Barley
And so very cool.00:30:11 Mark Barley
We're going to end the episode, as we do this every episode, is 5 quick questions.
00:30:17 James Albury
But hopefully quick answers.
00:30:20 Mark Barley
But you have no time to think about it.
00:30:22 Mark Barley
It's just whatever comes off the top of your brain first.
00:30:26 Mark Barley
So and there's no really rhyme or reason to them, other than some of the questions are
00:30:32 Mark Barley
some things I do know about you.
00:30:33 Mark Barley
So we'll start with Star Trek or Star Wars.
00:30:37 James Albury
Oh gosh, that's tough because I now like both of them.
00:30:40 James Albury
It started off with Star Trek.
00:30:41 James Albury
Now I like Star Wars almost as much as I like Star Trek.
00:30:44 Mark Barley
It's got to be quick, James.
00:30:48 James Albury
I don't know.
00:30:50 James Albury
That's tough.00:30:50 Mark Barley
No, it's got to be one.
00:30:52 Mark Barley
You have a car with the license plate Vader, but then I also know you have the Enterprise
like up in your office.
00:30:59 James Albury
Yeah, I have lots.
00:30:59 James Albury
Yeah.
00:31:00 Mark Barley
What is it?
00:31:01 James Albury
Oh man.
00:31:04 Mark Barley
This is 5 reasonably quick questions with James Albury.
00:31:08 James Albury
Okay.
00:31:10 James Albury
Well, Star Trek was first, so I'll go with Star Trek.
00:31:13 Mark Barley
Okay, favorite character from Star Trek?
00:31:16 James Albury
Captain Picard.
00:31:17 Mark Barley
Okay, all right.
00:31:19 Mark BarleyStargazing or working out?
00:31:26 James Albury
I like working out, but I also like stargazing.
00:31:28 James Albury
It's funny.
00:31:29 James Albury
I used to be a manager of health club and I've competed in bodybuilding.
00:31:33 James Albury
But yeah, but I really like astronomy.
00:31:35 James Albury
So okay, I'll have to go with the stargazing.
00:31:41 Mark Barley
I would hope so.
00:31:44 James Albury
That's my job.
00:31:44 Mark Barley
All right, favorite constellation?
00:31:50 James Albury
Winter or summer?
00:31:53 James Albury
I can't ask you.
00:31:54 Mark Barley
Winter.
00:31:55 Mark Barley
How about that?
00:31:55 James AlburyWinter.
00:31:56 James Albury
Orion the Hunter.
00:31:57 Mark Barley
Okay.
00:31:57 James Albury
Yeah.
00:31:58 Mark Barley
And that's Orion's Belt.
00:31:59 James Albury
That's the whole thing.
00:32:01 James Albury
All the stars.
00:32:01 Mark Barley
All right.
00:32:02 Mark Barley
But Orion's Belt is part of Orion the Hunter.
00:32:04 James Albury
Oh yeah.
00:32:05 Mark Barley
Just making sure.
00:32:06 James Albury
Alnitak, Alnolam and Taka.
00:32:07 James Albury
And you have Rigel and Safe and Bellatrix and Beetlejuice.
00:32:11 James AlburyAnd you have the Horsehead Nebula, the Great Nebula of Orion.
00:32:14 James Albury
You have the Trapezium in the Great Nebula of Orion.
00:32:16 James Albury
You have lots of stars in that.
00:32:20 James Albury
one constellation actually looks like what it's supposed to look like.
00:32:22 James Albury
And just about everyone in the world can see it, except Santa Claus and penguins.
00:32:27 James Albury
If you live at the North Pole, you only see the top of Orion.
00:32:29 James Albury
If you live at the South Pole, you only see his feet.
00:32:32 James Albury
But everywhere else, you can see him.
00:32:34 Mark Barley
All right, favorite thing about Gainesville?
00:32:37 James Albury
I like all the trees.
00:32:38 James Albury
I don't like pollen season, though.
00:32:40 James Albury
But I like the trees, and I also
00:32:44 James Albury
I like our community.
00:32:45 James AlburyIt's a lot quieter and less fast-paced than Miami, where I came from.
00:32:51 James Albury
Now, some people love the fast pace, because like my roommates in college, I said, oh my
God, I can't stand it here.
00:32:55 James Albury
It's too quiet.
00:32:56 James Albury
But then I said, no, I like this.
00:32:58 James Albury
It's quiet.
00:32:59 James Albury
Green Acres is the place for me.
00:33:03 Mark Barley
No, it was the perfect time to do your old man voice.
00:33:07 James Albury
Thank you, thank you very much.
00:33:10 Mark Barley
Favorite thing about Santa Fe?
00:33:12 James Albury
I like the fact that Santa Fe College is so inclusive of so many different backgrounds and
ethnicities and so forth.
00:33:22 James Albury
Anyone who wants to get an education can come here to Santa Fe College.
00:33:25 James Albury
There's so many opportunities.
00:33:26 James AlburyThere are scholarships, there's
00:33:29 James Albury
And it's affordable.
00:33:31 James Albury
And you can go, you can get your four-year degree here and you can learn a trade if you
want to.
00:33:36 James Albury
They have HVAC, they have automotive.
00:33:38 James Albury
And I like the fact that we also have centers near Gainesville.
00:33:42 James Albury
We have one in Archer.
00:33:43 James Albury
We have one in Stark.
00:33:46 James Albury
We have one in, yeah, this is Kirkpatrick, where we teach people how to become law
enforcement.
00:33:57 Mark Barley
All right, so one last time, where can anybody go to find anything about the planetarium for
Santa Fe?
00:34:04 James Albury
Yes, you can go to Santa Fe College's website, sfcollege.edu, and under visitors and
friends at the top of the page, you can pull that down to Kika Silva Plaw Planetarium.
00:34:15 James Albury
And once you're there, it will give you, it'll have an area where you can find out what's
showing, where you can buy tickets.
00:34:20 James AlburyYou can even reserve the planetarium for a private viewing, like if you want to have a
birthday party or a school field trip.
00:34:25 James Albury
We do those as well.
00:34:27 James Albury
And we have lots of other things that we can do.
00:34:30 James Albury
We have sometimes we have concerts in the planetarium.
00:34:33 James Albury
We had one of our professors who taught African drumming.
00:34:35 James Albury
He did a drumming concert in the planetarium as part of his students' final exam.
00:34:40 James Albury
And we invited the general public.
00:34:41 James Albury
And we've had people play the flute.
00:34:44 James Albury
We've had the Madrigal Singers, part of Fine Arts.
00:34:46 James Albury
They were singing Christmas carols in the planetarium.
00:34:48 James Albury
So lots of little things that you can experience
00:34:52 James Albury
by visiting the planetarium.
00:34:54 James Albury
And we have a beautiful campus.00:34:55 James Albury
So while you're here on Saturday, you can walk around the campus and enjoy all the pretty
foliage.
00:35:01 Mark Barley
That's right.
00:35:02 Mark Barley
Yeah, that's right.
00:35:03 Mark Barley
So one thing people don't know about what's happening right now is that you did this entire
podcast with your shoes off.
00:35:11 James Albury
Yes.
00:35:12 James Albury
I'm sorry if the smell in the room has gotten a bit.
00:35:16 James Albury
It's fine.
00:35:17 Mark Barley
I saw you move your shoes before we started and I was like, oh, he's getting grounded.
00:35:21 Mark Barley
This is, he's one with the studio here.
00:35:24 Mark Barley
Well, James, thank you so much for coming by and talking to us about the planetarium.
00:35:30 Mark Barley
Many continued success.
00:35:32 James Albury
Oh, you're very welcome.00:35:33 James Albury
And as always, keep looking up.
00:35:41 Mark Barley
If you found this podcast informative, there's more to discover on our website, SF
college.edu.
00:35:47 Mark Barley
You can also follow Santa Fe on all your favorite social media platforms, X, Facebook,
Instagram, YouTube.
00:35:53 Mark Barley
We're there at Santa Fe College.
00:35:55 Mark Barley
Give us a like, follow, and a subscribe.
00:35:58 Mark Barley
Have suggestions on who you want to hear from next or watch your story featured on the
podcast?
00:36:02 Mark Barley
Send us an e-mail at communications@sfcollege.edu.
00:36:07 Mark Barley
Thanks for listening and go Saints.