The Prince Albert Science Centre, located in the Gateway Mall, had a trip to the stars on the weekend
The science centre hosted “STARlab” with Saskatchewan’s Starman, Ron Waldron, at their Gateway Mall location on Saturday and Sunday.
Waldron, who lives in Saskatoon and owns Living Skies Stargazing is a retired educator and amateur astronomer who travels with a portable planetarium known as Starlab.
This was Waldron’s second trip to the Science Centre, he came and did a Star Talk in January 2023.
“The Science Centre was interested in having a portable planetarium for their program and the Saskatoon Board of Education happens to have one that travels,” he explained. “I’m allowed to take it and bring it to Prince Albert and so here it is.”
The Starlab can accommodate 25 students at a time. Waldron uses it to give four shows a day.
“The first one is the night sky, the second one is stories about the sky and the third one is the Zodiac,” he explained.
For the fourth session, he repeated the subject of the first one each day. Due to space constraints, the STARlab was set up in the area normally occupied by the Prince Albert Farmer’s Market.
Speaking before his presentations began on Saturday, Waldron said he hoped to serve as many people as he could.
“I’d like to fill it up every time but people are busy on the weekend, so I’ll be happy if we get 100 people through here on the weekend,” Waldron said.
Waldron’s passion for the universe came from a simple act by his father.
“When I was 10 years old, my dad took me out to look at the stars. He didn’t know at the time that that was going to change my life, but it did. Since I was 10 years old, I’ve bought and sold several telescopes, and I pursued astronomy pretty much my whole life,” he explained.
The STARlab itself is like a travelling planetarium.
“People come into STARlab, they sit in a circle and the lights dim and the stars come out, and then I can also bring out the constellations. I can show them where the planets are,” Waldron said.
He explained that he came to be the keeper of the STARlab because he was employed by the Saskatoon Board of Education for 36 years.
“When I retired, they asked me are you interested in going to classrooms and being the presenter, so that is what I do,” Waldron said.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
