BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Space Physics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2025.1697118
This article is part of the Research TopicHeliophysics Big Year: Education and Public Outreach ReportsView all 5 articles
Northern Alaska's Portable Planetarium Before, During, and After the Heliophysics Big Year
Provisionally accepted
Austin Robert Smith1*
Kalee Meurlott1Soumitra Sakhalkar1Kaz Storm1Kelly Taylor1Ankana Chaudhuri1Lynda McGilvary1
Victoria Sellers2
Heather Fischer2- 1University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, United States
- 2Oregon State University, Corvallis, United States
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The University of Alaska, Fairbanks has operated a portable planetarium for nearly two decades. This planetarium has visited remote communities, both on and off Alaska's limited road network, teaching heliophysics and astronomy concepts to students and the public. Over the past three years 33 events have reached thousands of people, and at 21 of these, voluntary questionnaires were given to attendees after a planetarium show. These short questionnaires have only four questions, covering science comprehension and enthusiasm, as well as limited demographic information. In this work the results from 902 questionnaires are presented, together with lessons learned from the variety of events and locations the planetarium has visited since 2023. Half of the questionnaire responses are from visitors aged 10-13, highlighting our focus on elementary and middle school students and the sound system has been improved as suggested from comments left on the questionnaire.
Keywords: Planetarium, Heliophysics, outreach, Education, Public Engagement, K-12 Education
Received: 01 Sep 2025; Accepted: 14 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Smith, Meurlott, Sakhalkar, Storm, Taylor, Chaudhuri, McGilvary, Sellers and Fischer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Austin Robert Smith, asmith155@alaska.edu
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