Santa Rosa Junior College Planetarium

The Santa Rosa Junior College Planetarium is pleased to offer planetarium presentations especially designed to be of interest to students of all grade levels and the community. Each program contains spectacular visual effects and up-to-date information on the various topics covered.

Our goal in presenting these programs is to stimulate interest and curiosity in the universe by combining education and entertainment.

With a dome 40 feet in diameter and 27 feet high and a capacity to seat 90, the Planetarium is one of the largest space science facilities in the California Community College System. As a Department in the Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math cluster, it is an important addition to the SRJC's Santa Rosa campus, one in which the community can be proud.

The Planetarium contains some of the most modern and sophisticated equipment, including the Goto model GX-10 star projector. This machine can reproduce the appearance of the sky onto the dome, showing the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars in their proper positions. Moreover, this projector can show the heavenly bodies as they appear from any place on Earth at any time in the past or future, for thousands of years. It can speed up the motions of the heavens so that days, years, centuries, or even millenia can be made to pass in minutes.

The function of the Planetarium is threefold. It is an instructional facility for students at SRJC; it provides a variety of programs designed to support the studies of students in elementary, junior high, and high school; and it serves as a theater for public planetarium presentations on the weekends.