Saturn Floats: Montreal Planetarium

For our second trip, we headed down to the Montreal Planetarium, to see a show about Saturn.

Miriam:

Today's destination was a surprisingly fitting follow up to the architecture museum. The planetarium had on display the candidates and the winner for the architecture of the new planetarium planned to be constructed between the Olympic stadium and the Biodome in two years. It won't be too soon if you ask me since the current building is one of those ugly brown boxes with no windows built in the 60's I was talking about in the last post.

We assisted to "Saturn: beyond the rings." It seems that Titan, one of Saturn's moons, is the most likely candidate to be the next earth. So if you are looking to invest in up and coming real estate that's a good long term bet. You heard it here first.

I'm looking forward to going to the new planetarium to witness what 50 years of technology as brought to the light show.

John:

As Miriam mentioned, there was a nice segue between our last visit and this one. The architecture here was more what you think about when you think about architecture: plans, models, that sort of thing. Models are fun. It's too bad they could only pick just one.

The Saturn show was informative, if a little cheesy. The background music sounded like it might work in a porn flick. The funny thing is that the narrator/host was the guy that picked the music (according to the credits). Oh well.

The typical night sky show was interspersed with props: a to scale model of Saturn placed in a tub of water to show its density (not as dense as Jupiter, which explains the ringed planet's squashed shape), a replica (probably not accurate) of Galileo's telescope, and mock-ups of Saturn's moons.

Ok, so I admit to being a Trekkie, so anything space is automatically cool for me. (Side note: I also enjoy Star Wars. Why can't one be both?) The idea that Titan could eventually be an inhabitable planet is tantalizing, even if the time line is long term to say the least. What makes all the sci-fi stuff attractive is that we just don't know what's out there. The more questions we answer, the more questions we have to ask. Last week we ate at the restaurant at the top of the CN Tower. Looking down on the city put life in a different perspective: the buildings were like blocks, the cars like toys. When you pull back for an outside view of our galaxy, it's the same idea, but magnified so much that it's hard to get a clear picture. It's easy to let imagination kick in.