'I’ve learned a a lot about stars by coming here. I knew enough stars before so that I could point out a few, but here I got to learn more about them - about stars, what they are, what they are made of and so on. How they come about and into being. Before we were just learning names and constellations but here we were going deeper into it. Usually I just looked at them - without any understanding. Just you know, like if you looking at a tree that is standing there, you know that it is a tree, it is just there, it is a tree, you don’t really know what it does or anything. So I’ve got to learn more about stars, who they do and what their significance are in our lives and in the lives of everything around us. I understood that things were big you know - like the earth has got to be big, and South Africa has to be big - but without understanding that there were even bigger things out there. You know when you look at the sun, from a distance, like when it is on the horizon before it sets. You are not exactly sure where it is and how it relates to you and your life - you just know it is something that is out there. You are so far away from it, you don’t actually know that is very big. You could fit like a million earths into the sun - that is how big it is. It is hard to grasp. You know you are part of this world, but the universe can feel like something else - far from you. Even at night, you are thinking: there is the universe and here am I. But all in all you are part of the universe, you know, the universe is you, the universe is me, the universe is around - the space we are living in is the universe. This is not just earth and your life and then the universe is over there - you are in the universe. So in terms of understanding the whole universe like that. Ja… ja… a very very big place you know - really no one can understand how big it is, like fully understand. You can talk numbers, like 13,7 billion light years - what is that? You don’t know, but it’s big, something very big.’
This is a transition area between Planetarium entrance and the Planetarium dome - An area where the viewers eyes are given some time to adjust to the darkness that they will be in when inside the dome.
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