Originally posted on: January 11, 2008 1:00 PM

Last Friday, the Free-Ride family was visiting friends in Santa Barbara. It was a very rainy day, so we decided that a trip to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History made more sense than a hike or a trip to the beach.

Within minutes of our arrival, there was an announcement that a planetarium show was just about to start, and that there was still room for more visitors to see it. We took advantage of the opportunity.

It was a really good decision.

For one thing, unlike planetariums at "major" natural history museums, the Gladwin Planetarium in Santa Barbara does live programs where an actual person is controlling what you see, telling you about it, and answering your questions. I love the highly produced movie-like planetarium shows you can see at the famous planetariums, but this is way more interactive.

And, although we hadn't realized it when we decided to catch the planetarium show they were announcing, this was an extra show they decided to do because of the larger-than-usual number of visitors they had (on a rainy school holiday). This extra show, run by the planetarium director herself, had no predetermined agenda. The floor was open for visitors (kids and adults alike) to tell her what they wanted to see and to ask whatever questions they had as they had them.

As you might imagine, the Free-Ride offspring were in heaven.

Among the things discussed in the fabulously free-wheeling session:

• - Everything with mass has gravity -- even little kids.
• - Polaris (aka the North star) is not the brightest star in the sky, but it does the best job of keeping in place as the constellations seem to rotate through the sky over the course of the year.
• - Our identification of groups of stars as constellations (and especially what we think those constellations look like) is totally arbitrary. For example, there's a constellation Auriga ("the goat herder") with a star named Capella that, in Thailand, is known as the "mother duck star" (because other dimmer stars seem to be lined up to follow it).
• - The surface of Mars is covered in "rust dust" (iron oxide), not blood.
• - The atmosphere of Mars is carbon dioxide.The Rock Abrasion Tool (R.A.T.) on the Mars Rover is really neat.
• - Despite what cartoons would lead you to believe, black holes are not cosmic vacuum cleaners that suck everything else into them.

There was, of course, a lively discussion of the status of Pluto. And the assembled kids (and even some of the adults) asked some really good questions, like:

• Could we grow plants on Mars?
• Why don't the planets and stars fall down?
• Why doesn't the Sun's gravity pull the planets in so they crash into the Sun?
• Is there anything that could knock the Earth out of the nice balance of forces that keeps it orbiting the Sun rather than crashing into it?
• What's the difference between a planet and a moon?
• Why do those bears (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, otherwise known as the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper) have such long tails? Were the Greeks confused about bears or what?

Funny that it should come back to bears. Anyway, the quick story on why those bears have such long tails:

This (mortal) woman named Callisto had a thing going with Zeus (king of the gods). Zeus's wife, Hera, didn't approve of his having a girlfriend, and she was going to direct her anger at Callisto, who Zeus decided to save by turning her into a bear (because would the king of the gods be dating a bear?).

Of course, there was a complication: before she narrowly avoided Hera's wrath by becoming a bear, Callisto had a baby named Archus. When he grew up, he was in the woods hunting and suddenly this beautiful bear came out into a clearing and seemed to be looking at him but not running away (as a sensible bear would do). Archus decided that this meant that the gods had sent him this very bear to kill.

As Archus was readying his bow and arrow, Zeus quickly turned him into a bear -- because the bear he was about to shoot was his mother Callisto. Then Zeus decided that the woods might not be the safest place to leave them, so he grabbed them by their tails and swung them around and put them into the night sky to protect them from harm. They're still there, but their tails got stretched out by all the swinging.

Finally, one piece of dialogue from the planetarium question and answer:

Younger offspring: I have a joke.

Planetarium director: Does it have something to do with stars or planets?

Younger offspring: Yes.

Planetarium director: OK, what's your joke?

Younger offspring: What's a baby's favorite constellation?

Planetarium director: Hmm. I don't know. What is a baby's favorite constellation?

Younger offspring: The Big Diaper.