THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 19, 1995 TAG: 9511160533
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K3 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY JOB
SOURCE: BY MARY ADAMS-LACKEY, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 112 lines
FINDING A GUY still starry-eyed about his work after almost 26 years on the same job would be about as likely as a total solar eclipse in Hampton Roads. Right?
Unless, of course, you know Robert J. Hitt Jr., director of the Chesapeake Planetarium.
Less than 30 days after he came to work on Feb. 2, 1970, the city was in the path of a once-every-300-years, total solar eclipse.
People came from all over the world to watch.
``It was great!'' says Hitt.
People still come from all over the world to visit the 120-seat planetarium - the most recent foreign visitors being high school exchange students from Russia. Each year more than 40,000 people visit the facility built by the school system more than 32 years ago.
Hitt is a hit with the stargazers.
Sheila Rybak of Virginia Beach first came to an evening presentation to get extra credit in an astronomy course she is taking at Tidewater Community College. She kept coming back. Now she and her husband are setting their sights on a telescope for Christmas.
Her interest in astronomy, she says, ``has been piqued'' by Hitt's presentations. ``He makes all the difference. When he narrates there is such enthusiasm it carries over.''
Hitt brings the heavens down to earth daily for 300 to 500 grade-schoolers through programs based on topics from their science classes.
He can draw on personal experiences, such as the two-minute, nine-second total solar eclipse he witnessed off the coast of Borneo on Oct. 24.
After explaining to kids how the moon causes a solar eclipse, he tells them: ``There was just an eclipse, but you missed it because it wasn't in your back yard.''
``And then I tell them,'' he says, `` `I just got back from Asia where I saw it.' The kids are so excited. And then I tell them they are going to see it.''
Then he shows them the video he took of the eclipse he traveled 17 days and flew 60 hours to see.
He says, ``That's part of the job.''
But it is by no means all.
``You have to be a jack-of-all-trades,'' he says. ``You need to be an educator, an engineer, a diplomat and an artist. And you need to be creative.''
When Hitt needs spacescapes, he paints them. If he needs models of spacecraft and planets, he builds them. He's used cardboard boxes, baby-food jars, electrical tape and old lenses to create solar systems.
Since a computer system was installed in 1991 he's had some high-tech help in his presentations.
Soon there will be a 24-hour Starline phone service with information on what's up in the night sky and in the planetarium, too.
During lunar eclipses he keeps the planetarium open into the early morning hours.
He tirelessly answers questions from students, judges science fairs and helps with student projects.
He also takes calls from the public.
One day an older woman called, Hitt says. ``With a real note of puzzlement in her voice, she said, `There's a thing outside that looks like the moon.' I said, `It is the moon.' ''
She was dumbfounded.
``Some people,'' he says, ``never look up.''
Others look him up. Lawyers ask about moon phases and sun angles, information they need to construct their cases. Builders and architects want to know how to position buildings to best use solar energy.
Nobody, however, calls to ask what's good for the planetarium.
Hitt and local amateur astronomers wish City Hall would call.
You see, there is one little favor they'd like from their neighbor - turn out the lights on Thursday nights.
`` `We've been letting people look at the stars here for thirty-some years,'' says Hitt. ``And all of a sudden the City Hall building goes up and they put all these flood lights around it. They light up the sky without any regard to what's going on next door.''
Inside the planetarium, however, the sky is dark. The stars are out. And the audience goes on an impeccably timed 50-minute tour of the winter sky.
Hitt's ability to answer questions just as they form in a viewer's mind is uncanny, and comes, he says, from years of anticipating queries.
He tells stories of mythic proportions. There's Orion, the sky warrior of winter, perpetually fleeing westward and away from Scorpius. By the time Scorpius appears in the night sky it's summer and Orion is long gone.
He announces meteor showers with the familiarity of a weatherman giving a forecast. Look for the the Geminids on Dec. 14.
More than one person has left the planetarium starstruck.
There's Scott Donnelly, a USAir flight attendant from Virginia Beach who shortly after his first visit two years ago bought a powerful telescope and is now a regular visitor.
``After you get the mythology and learn how to pick out the star patterns,'' says Donnelly, ``you go out and look up at the night sky and you can see Orion. And you can see the different star patterns up there. You can be anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world, and it's familiar and it's like an old friend.''
This interest in the night sky makes Hitt's days.
And is why he's not interested in academic research.
``I'm not a research astronomer,'' he says. ``I'm an educator.'' In fact, Hitt is working on a doctorate in education through Virginia Tech.
``When you have a crowd of people around you who really want to hear about the stars, and you start telling them a star story or some facts about the stars and you realize they're all just so appreciative, it's very pleasing.
``The big thrill in astronomy is sharing it with people.''
Chesapeake, thank your lucky stars. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot
``Some people never look up,'' says Robert J. Hitt Jr., director of
the Chesapeake Planetarium.
by CNB