Spokane Falls Community College’s new science building will be dedicated today, and while officials are excited about the entire building, the Eos Planetarium is the prized centerpiece.
At Eos, the night sky is not just a pattern of lights reflected on a dome. It’s a digital image that can be manipulated to show any date in history, time of day or year, or a magnified portion of the sky. When instructional movies are shown, such as one of a black hole, it’s like IMAX “in the round.”
“We’re just a little excited,” said Jim Brady, dean of math, computing and science instruction at the college.
The 70,000-square-foot science building cost about $30 million. The planetarium itself was about $400,000, with a majority of the money coming from donors and fundraising – a point of pride for the college.
The facility’s first floor is dedicated to life sciences – two zoology labs, two biology labs, two anatomy/physiology labs (including a cadaver operating room) and a large botany lab. The second floor houses the physical sciences – four chemistry labs, two physics labs and two geology labs.
The community college is one of only two in Washington with a planetarium, and it may be the only one in the state with both a planetarium and a cadaver lab.
From the Spokane Spokesman Review