SF Unscripted - James Albury

Hear from James Albury, manager of the Kika Silva Pla Planetarium, the only planetarium in North Florida. 

Transcript

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.