Soaring to astronomical heights

At 8:45 a.m. Tuesday, Henry Avetisian and his fellow classmates gazed at the starry sky.

“I like when the [guest speaker] took us into the past and then the future,” the 9-year-old said.

Marcio Tomic, of Sky Dome Planetarium, took about 20 students more than 10,000 years into the future after leading them through a small tunnel Tuesday into the mobile planetarium in the auditorium of Salem Lutheran School.

“This is Polaris, or the North Star, tonight,” Tomic said to the class as he pointed to the star with a laser pointer. “This is Polaris in a thousand years. It will still point us north.”

Under the large, inflatable planetarium, Tomic told the students to imagine being lost in the wilderness. He pointed to a constellation in the shape of a bear.

“You’re going to want to find Ursa Major,” Tomic said. “In the tail is the dipper, and from its stem you can find the North Star.”

He sent students soaring thousands of light years away into the uncharted territories of nebulae.

“It’s not easy being in charge of the solar system,” Tomic joked. “I think I’m doing a pretty good job.”

With a click of a button, Saturn’s rings twirled through the sky. From there, he zoomed in to the surface of some of the planet’s 60 moons.

“Wow,” gasped most of the children. But Nicholas Barsaghyan, 10, seemed unamused.

“I know a lot of this stuff already,” Nicholas said. “I’ve got a big book on science at home that I really like to read.”

Tomic travels around Southern California and noted that many students he meets are very knowledgeable in astronomy. Some are even a little paranoid.

“In certain areas that are on the low-income scale, a lot of kids have apocalyptic ideology,” Tomic said. “I’ve had kids ask me if it’s true that the world is going to end in 2012.”

For Henry, though, it’s all about the myth behind the stars that scientists have named throughout history.

“I like to learn about Greek mythology,” Henry said. “I have a lot of books on it.”

Tonight, though, when Henry looks out to the stars the same way he does every night, he’ll be able to name a new set of constellations he didn’t know before.