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Contact Information Director: Anthony Kilgore Email: kilgorae@pwcs.edu Phone: 703.580.4224 Fax: 703.580.4299 |
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The holiday season is upon us and what better way to spend a cold December evening then inside the planetarium learning about the night sky. The holiday show will be a tour of the Prince William County night sky. It will include a holiday theme with music selections from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra set to laser lights as well as a few other surprises. Who knows, it might even snow!
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Safety Warning:
Private Groups:
If you are not one of the 88 Prince William County Schools a fee of $5.00 per person entering the planetarium will be charged. Please email to set up a private showing on a date that is convenient for your group. Also, private shows must have either a minimum of 30 paying visitors or a minimum of $150 to make a reservation.
The Planetarium is now booking school groups.
Please email if you are interested in making a reservation.
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The planetarium at C.D. Hylton Senior High School, known as the Skydome Planetarium, contains a Spitz 512 ATM 3 star projector capable of projecting 1354 stars, the five visible eye planets, moon phasing, daily and yearly motion, the celestial coordinates and other reference lines on a thirty-foot curved dome. Special effect projectors create solar and lunar eclipses, aurora display, meteor and meteor showers. All of these are automated to a computer. Video projection allows the use of VHS,DVD and laser disc capability. Thirteen slide projectors compliment various programs. A 16 speaker stereo sound system provides the audience with music in the round. Cushioned seats provide accommodations for 58. |
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Although the planetarium is located at Hylton Senior High School, the facility serves as a field trip experience for all the schools in Prince William County. Surrounding school districts utilize the planetarium when scheduling is available. At times, interdisciplinary programs such as "Mother Earth: Father Sky" and "Shakespeare and the Stars" have been developed with the drama and music departments. More than 14,000 visitors a year have watched the stars under the Skydome. |
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Safety Warning: |
The Top 10 Things You Need to Know
When Planning a Visit to the Planetarium
10. Teachers and students are to turn off all electronic devices and must remain seated during the entire show unless there is an emergency. Teachers texting during a show sets the wrong example for their students.
9. The “little red flashlights” are no longer a part of the planetarium program. Also, teachers should not all sit next to each other, but rather disperse between their students so that everyone is within arms reach.
8. Teachers are to have taught rotation, revolution, seasons, high & low tide and moon phases to the students before you come to visit the planetarium. The planetarium is a supplement to your classroom instruction and should not take the place of those lessons.
7. All planetarium shows will feature laser lights, strobe lights, and flashing lights. It is the responsibility of the teacher(s) to make sure this is ok for all of their students before arriving at the planetarium. If it is a problem, those students should remain at school.
6. It is your job to arrange transportation to and from the planetarium. All shows begin at
5. In order to accommodate more groups the planetarium can hold 65 comfortably. If your group is slightly larger than that please let Mr. Kilgore know as we might be able to pull in a few extra chairs or sit on the floor to open up another time slot. This is especially true in schools that have an odd number of classes visiting.
4. To schedule a show, please have your lead grade level teacher email Mr. Kilgore for a date and time that is convenient in regards to when you will have taught Astronomy. The planetarium is prioritizing 3rd graders this year. All 3rd grade lead teachers are requested to email in before October 30th to make a reservation. All 4th and 5th grade lead teachers are invited to email Mr. Kilgore after October 30th and will be given any left over time slots.
3. The planetarium was awarded a very large grant to update the equipment sometime towards the end of this school year. Therefore, this year’s show will be the same as last year’s show. Please refrain from using the video clips featured in the show in your own classroom.
2. The planetarium was built in 1991 before anyone knew what an SOL was. It was not built to specifically teach the SOL’s, more so to enhance student interest in Astronomy and learn how to locate things visible in the night sky. Please reinforce SOL’s and connections in your own classrooms.
1. Come prepared to have FUN!!!
On-Line Labs, Activities and Worksheets
in Astronomy 
Elementary and Middle School Students
High School Students
Luminosity |
The following labs are from the University of Gettysburg's Project Clea-Contemporary Laboratory Experiences in Astronomy. They are suitable for high school and college astronomy classes. The software to run the programs can be downloaded from the University of Gettysburg's home page website free of charge.
The Revolution of the Moons of Jupiter
Radar Measurements of the Rotation Rate of Mercury
The Flow of Energy Out of the Sun
The Classification of Stellar Spectra
Photoelectric Photometry of the Pleiades
Center for Educational Resources (CERES) Project
Through funding from NASA, faculty at Montana State University and classroom teachers from across the nation have developed an extensive library of on-line and interactive K-12 science education materials for teaching astronomy. Closely aligned with the NRC National Science Education Standards, these web based lessons make maximum use of exciting on-line NASA resources, data, and images. In addition to classroom ready materials using contemporary teaching strategies, CERES has developed several on-line NASA data search engines and two graduate level distance learning courses, available over the internet to K-12 teachers. The following activities were taken from this website for PWCS teachers and students to use. They are grouped according to grade level but the activites may apply to more than the grade level specified, based on teacher evaluation!
Grades K-4 
Birthday Moons
Students become familiar with lunar phases by locating and then graphing the moon phase of their birthdays. After listening and discussing lunar myths and legends they create
their own Birthday Moon Story.
Sky Paths
Studying the Movement of Celestial Objects Grades k-4 By using these activities in K-4 students will have the concrete experiences of observing, organizing, comparing, and describing the movement of objects that they observe in the sky.
Learning Planet Sizes
In this activity, learners use the concepts of greater than, less than, and equals to classify student height, object size, and planet size. They will build scale models of the planets based on their discoveries of planet size.
MoonQuest
Students explore Moon legends and data by forming expert teams and sharing knowledge.
Grades 5-8 
Investigating the Changing Polar Ice Caps
Students explore seasonal changes on Mars and Earth by analyzing images of the polar ice caps in summer and winter.
Planet Paths: Studying Planetary Orbital Paths.
This activity is designed to help students understand that planets travel in nearly circular orbits around the sun and that planetary motion obeys laws defined by Kepler and Newton.
Polar Caps: Image Processing Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, students learn to use computer image processing techniques.
Changing Faces: A Study of Solar and Planetary Rotation Rates
Students examine images of the Sun and planets to determine their rotation rates.
Mars Quest
Students team up to create a travel brochure to Mars describing the Martian atmosphere, climate, topography, and mythology.
How Much Do You Weigh on Distant Planets?
Students study the effects of gravity on the planets of the Solar System
Digital Images: From Satellites to the Internet
Students create digital images from binary data sets and design information transfer systems.
Analyzing Meteorological Data From Mars
Students compare real-time Earth and Mars weather measurements for temperature, wind speed, humidity and atmospheric pressure by accessing Internet data resources from NASA.
Grades 9-12 
Sun's Impact on Earth's Temperature
Students manipulate graphical computer models to determine the effect of distance, albedo, and greenhouse effectiveness on planet temperature.
The Expanding Universe
Students create a balloon model of the expanding universe and review Hubble Space Telescope measurements that are refining estimates for the age of the universe.
Galactic Inquiry
Students view NASA images of galaxies and develop a galaxy classification scheme. Students then compare and contrast their classification scheme with that developed by Edwin Hubble.
Life Cycle of Stars
Students analyze characteristics that indicate human life cycles, and then apply these observational principles to various NASA pictures of stars to synthesize patterns of stellar life cycles.
Students divide into five research teams to make recommendations for building a new observatory for NASA.
Searching for Protoplanetary Disks
Students will download NASA Hubble Space Telescope views of star-forming regions in nebulae and look for evidence of planetary systems forming beyond our own solar system.
Astronomy With a Stick--Daytime Astronomy for Elementary and Middle School Students
AWS Unit One Introduction Tracking A Moving Shadow
Activity One
Objective: To observe the movement of a shadow and its changing length over a period of time.
Activity Two
Objective: To construct a compass rose and find directions.
Activity Three
Objective: To use a compass rose to determine azimuth of the sun.
Activity Four
Objective: To show that the sun reaches its highest altitude at solar noon.
AWS Unit Two Introduction The Rise and Fall of Daylight Hours 
Activity One
Objective: To compute the change in the amount of daylight from day to day.
Activity Two
Objective: To construct a line graph showing the changing times throughout the year for sunrise and sunset at your location.
Activity Three
Objective: To construct a 24-hour clock to be used as a pie graph to show daylight verses nighttime hours.
AWS Unit Three Introduction Making and Using Models
Activity One
Objective: To construct a longitude-latitude grid on a sphere.
Activity Two
Objective: To demonstrate the effect of the inclined angle of the Earth's equator with respect to the plane of its orbit on the distribution of daylight on the Earth's surface.
Eyes on the Sky, Feet on the Ground (From Havard University)
Teachers should evaluate each activity to determine which activities would be appropriate for each grade level.
Chapter One The Earth's Rotation
Activities Within Chapter One
Activities Within Chapter Two
Chapter 3 Time and the Calendar
Activities Within Chapter Three
Activities Within Chapter Four
Activities Within Chapter Five
Activities Within Chapter Six
