Learning celestial navigation
at Morehead Planetarium
By Tony Rice
You might not think a visit to a planetarium could save
your life but that’s how at least seven astronauts see the
Morehead Planetarium and Science Center in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina.
Nearly every astronaut in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo,
and Skylab programs made multiple visits to Morehead to
learn celestial navigation. Each spent at least two days
learning the basics of celestial mechanics and practicing
star recognition.
Astronaut training began at the NASA’s Langley
Research Center in nearby Hampton, Va. Morehead’s
location allowed astronauts to keep their six-day a week
schedule by landing their T-33 and T-38 trainer jets at the
university’s airport before moving on to Cape Canaveral,
It all began in 1960 planetarium director Anthony
Jenzano saw the facility’s potential in teaching America’s
simulator originally used to train pilots during World War II
capsule’s thrusters. Simulators were also created for
Gemini and Apollo capsules seating multiple astronauts.
Materials used to ranged from plywood and paint to
simple cardboard and tape to an old barber chair.
“You’ve got a wonderful view of the sky and it was
a high altitude of 40,000 feet and would turn the lights
completely down in the cockpit.” Neil Armstrong recalled.
Armstrong spent the most time training at Morehead, 130
hours over 20 days.
That knowledge gained under the planetarium dome
was put to mission and life saving use at least three times.
Planetarium technicians put their experience building
special effects to enhance public shows to work creating
a training environment which replicated challenges
astronauts might face in their capsules should something
go wrong. And something did go wrong, more than once.
“If all else fails, we will use the stars as our only reference,”
said Gemini astronaut Walter Cunningham.
The facility’s Zeiss Model II star projector was among
to more accurately represent the 42 brightest stars. It
was also capable of displaying stars visible from both the
Northern and Southern hemispheres giving astronauts a
much needed and unfamiliar view.
introduction to the facility and the Zeiss projector.
Astronauts quickly rolled up their sleeves as Doctoral
candidate James Batten provided an introduction to the
celestial coordinate system that would be used throughout
the training to identify stars as they passed through view
ports of their simulated spacecraft. The remainder of
the day was spent learning to identify constellations of
the zodiac and their stars in sequence. The second day
course corrections along the planned orbital path of
each astronaut’s mission. A “spin-the-world” game was
developed where star pos