The West Virginia Wesleyan College Planetarium’s September public show follows a spacecraft that spent a decade crossing the solar system to catch a comet — and the small lander it dropped onto the surface once it got there.
“Rosetta” screens at 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 5, on the second floor of Christopher Hall on the WVWC campus in Buckhannon.
The video traces the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission, launched in 2004 and built to do something no mission had done before: rendezvous with a comet, fly alongside it and put a lander on it. Rosetta reached Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in 2014, and its Philae lander touched down that November — the first controlled landing on a comet’s surface. What the two returned changed how astronomers understand the icy leftovers from the solar system’s formation, and what they may have delivered to the early Earth.
The full monthly program runs about an hour, pairing the video with a guided tour of the current night sky. Weather permitting, telescope observing follows the show, and free sky charts and astronomy posters will be available. Doors open a half-hour before showtime, and seating in the 40-seat facility is first-come, first-served.
Admission is $3 for adults and $2 for students and seniors. Children under 18 attend free. Proceeds support the planetarium’s upkeep and free shows for school and youth groups.
The WVWC Planetarium has offered public astronomy programs since Christopher Hall opened in 1967, when community outreach was part of the building’s original mission; a later Naylor Family gift funded its digital projection system on the same premise. It hosts public shows year-round, typically at 8 p.m. on the first Saturday of each month, and is directed by Dr. Tracey DeLaney, associate professor of physics at the college.
For more information, call 304-473-8330.
