Join the STEMcx Academy at the Banneker Planetarium at Catonsville Community College to view the night skies and

Find the lost Turkey

Shows begins 11:00 a.m in Room 030A (Benjamin Banneker Planetarium) located in the Mathematics and Science Hall building on the Catonsville Campus. For Grades K-12.

The facility is named for Benjamin Banneker, a free black man and self-taught scientist who lived in neighboring Oella and wrote a series of almanacs during the 1790s. The programs are designed to encourage lifelong science education, and they use Banneker's unique legacy to promote broader interest in STEM education.

The new facility exemplifies a wave of change taking place across the country as planetariums forsake the optical-mechanical technology of a half-century ago and roar into the digital age. Like other high-quality planetariums in the area, including those at the Maryland Science Center, Towson University and the Robinson Nature Center in Columbia, Banneker has left behind "star-ball" projectors like the one at the original Banneker.

"Those basically consisted of a metal ball with lights inside and pinholes for each star," said David Ludwikoski, the planetarium's director and associate professor of astronomy at CCBC.

The new Banneker boasts a Spitz SciDome XD digital projector that can display 88 constellations on a seamless 30-foot dome. The old Banneker showed four. Designed by the Spitz Inc., a Pennsylvania-based planetarium maker, the projector allows operators to zoom in and out of scenes on remote planets and moons, show past and future starscapes, build and add sounds, alter the duration of shots, and cross-cut among locations and eras.