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FOAP Newsletter November 2025 |
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President's Message
Hello Members - November is one of my favorite months each year. We are fully settled into the Fall season, a colorful time to enjoy a pause before Winter arrives. Fittingly, this is the month when we take time to remember many, to celebrate and honor, and to give thanks. FOAP continues our engagement with the community, and as noted below, we have another full schedule of events for November. Thanks are due to our board members and our many volunteers who help make it all happen. We hope to see many of our members too and especially at our weekend shows at the planetarium! Of Note! We are seeking two new members to join the Board of Directors, elected in January. Read more about this volunteer opportunity in the newsletter and on our website. And for students, check out two opportunities highlighted below: our 3rd Annual Dome Fest and the Annual FOAP College Scholarship. Save the Date!
The Friends will be holding our end-of-year Member and Volunteer Appreciation Night on Friday, December 12. This is our chance to thank all of you, and your chance to come to the planetarium for a free show! Look for a special invitation coming soon and plan now to join us for a memorable evening. See you under the stars,
Theresa Carroll Schweser
President |
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FOAP’s Portable Dome Gets Spooky at the Spooky Mad Science Expo
By Dana Ott On October 18, FOAP staff and volunteers brought the Portable Planetarium Dome to the Spooky Mad Science Expo held in Alexandria, Virginia. Now in its 10th year, the Expo brings together “hundreds of curious minds for an afternoon of hands-on discovery, eerie tech, and Halloween-inspired science. Past expos have featured incredible partners like NASA, NSF, USPTO, Boeing, and Titan Robotics.” As one of the featured exhibits at the Expo, FOAP ran a series of short shows on repeat during the four-hour expo, hosting 15 shows attended by 226 people. It was an awesome opportunity to make connections with other vendors and with Alexandria residents, and FOAP greatly appreciates the efforts of our volunteers who made our participation in the Expo possible!
Interested in learning more about volunteering with FOAP? Fill out our volunteer survey on our website or email contact@friendsoftheplanetarium.org.
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It’s Spooky Time at the Portable Planetarium! |
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Inside the Portable Planetarium Doom at the Spooky Mad Science Expo. |
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Call for Films for the 3rd Annual Dome Fest Full Dome Film Festival
By Kathi Overton Arlington secondary students are invited to submit their original films to the 2026 Dome Fest Full Dome Film Festival, sponsored by the Friends of Arlington’s David M. Brown Planetarium.
Films must be in a full dome format, up to six minutes long, and may be fiction or non-fiction.
The Friends have special full dome compatible cameras available that students may borrow at no cost.
The festival will host free screenings of the student produced full dome films at the planetarium on February 21 & 22, 2026.
More information about the 2026 Dome Fest, including how to borrow cameras and submit films, will be available on the Friends of the Planetarium website in mid-November.
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Preparing for Dome Fest 2025 at the David M. Brown Planetarium Photo: Kathi Overton |
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David M Brown Public Planetarium Shows for November
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November is Another Busy Month for the Friends!
There are multiple events on the Friends’ calendar this month. We hope to see you at some of them! |
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Arlington Mill Teen Night – Portable dome event
Arlington Mill Community Center |
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Public Weekend Shows at the David M. Brown
Planetarium, 1426 N Quincy Street, Arlington, VA |
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Afternoon Under the Stars - Portable dome event Shirlington Branch of the Arlington Public Library |
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Don’t Miss FOAP's Public Shows this Month
at the David M. Brown Planetarium!
Saturday, November 15 Planet Nine (6:00pm)
Follow a team from CalTech as they uncover details about Kuiper Belt dwarf worlds - like the remarkably bright Eris; or Haumea, an egg-shaped object rotating incredibly fast; and Sedna, whose orbit takes it deep into the far reaches of the Solar System. Is there a massive new planet beyond these distant objects? Can they find this mysterious planet nine?
Duration: 27 minutes
Recommended for general audiences – best for ages 10 and up
Dream Big (7:30pm)
Dream Big exposes the hidden world behind some of the most exciting inventions and structures across the world. It is a journey examining great wonders of engineering, but also a tale of human grit, aspiration, compassion and the triumph of human ingenuity over life’s greatest challenges. Duration: 42 minutes
Recommended for general audiences – best for ages 10 and up
Sunday, November 16 Perfect Little Planet (1:30pm) Follow along with a family of friendly aliens as they visit our solar system in search of a nice vacation spot. Fly over the surface of Pluto, sail through the rings of Saturn, feel the lightning storms at Jupiter, and walk on the surface of Mars. Where do you think our alien family will end up?
Duration: 35 minutes
Recommended for general audiences - good for elementary age children Two Small Pieces of Glass (3:00pm) Follow along with two students as they interact with an astronomer at a local star party. Along the way, students learn the history of the telescope - from Galileo’s modifications to a child’s spy glass, using two small pieces of glass, to the launch of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the future of astronomy. Appealing to audiences of all ages, this show explores the wonder and discovery made by astronomers throughout the last 400 years. Duration: 23 minutes Recommended for general audiences FOAP members will receive an email notification when tickets go on sale. **This is the first time the Friends have shown Dream Big at the Arlington Planetarium**
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Reminders
CFC
Your donations support FOAP in its mission to promote and support Arlington’s David M. Brown Planetarium as an accessible community resource for all people to learn, engage, and be inspired by the wonders of science and the universe. Thank you so much for your support!FOAP Charity Code - 39066
AFAC
This year, FOAP is supporting our local non-profit, AFAC, by collecting non-perishable food at each of our shows this season. Please consider bring some canned food to a show! |
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Friends' Student Scholarships
By Maryclare Whitehead
Since 2013, Friends of Arlington’s David M. Brown has funded more than $65,000 in student scholarships. We collaborate with the Arlington Community Foundation (ACF) to provide scholarships to Arlington Public School (APS) students who attend college and study Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Last year, a scholarship was awarded to a student who attended the Arlington Career Center and is now studying at the University of Virginia.
Please check out our website if you’d like to find out more about the David M. Brown Scholarship. The application period opens mid-December and closes in early February. Plan now to apply!
To learn more about the application process and how to apply for a scholarship please visit the ACF Scholarship Webpage to sign up to receive email announcements. SCHOLARSHIP FAQs/When can I apply?
PREGUNTAS FRECUENTES SOBRE BECAS/¿Cuándo puedo presentar mi solicitud? |
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Friends Board of Directors Vacancies The Friends of Arlington’s Planetarium seeks to fill two vacancies on its 2026 Board of Directors. Interested candidates seeking information and applying can find details at the FOAP Elections webpage. The deadline for submission is December 15, 2025. |
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What is Dark Matter?
By Rebecca Sáenz
If you’re interested in space, you may have heard that about 27% of our universe is made up of something called “dark matter”. The matter we're familiar with, which is the stuff in stars, galaxies, and you, is only 5% of the universe. Dark matter is invisible but has gravity. (The other 68% is dark energy, which is the strange force that causes the universe to expand!)
While we’re still discovering what this mysterious substance is, scientists have a guess at what it does. The moon spins around Earth, which spins around the Sun, which spins around the black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Galaxies spin so fast that they should probably tear themselves apart, and they would if only the |
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Dark Matter and Dark Energy Graphic: National Geographic |
matter we can see existed. Something must be giving galaxies extra mass, creating more gravity to keep them together.
Scientists found dark matter not because they could see it, but because they could see what it does. This detective work, looking for evidence left behind things in space and not the objects themselves, is how new black holes and planets are discovered!
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Jokes for Kids Only!
Q. Did you hear about the new book all about anti-gravity? A. It’s impossible to put down! Q. What is Earth’s worst habit? A. Making fun of other planets for having no life! Q. Which is heavier? A full moon or a half moon? A. A half moon - a full moon is lighter! |
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Word Search by Addison Fuelling |
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What's in the Sky this Month By Mike Rhee |
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What is the Universe Made Of?
By Jennifer Bartlett
The short answer to what the universe is made of might be matter and energy but that leaves much subtly unstated.
Normal matter, like ourselves, planets, stars, gas, dust, and galaxies, interacts with light; it emits, reflects, or absorbs light. We see this illuminous matter. Scientists estimate that this type of matter along with the familiar forms of energy, including light, constitutes about 5% of the universe.
Dark matter as shown by Zwicky and Rubin exerts a gravitational influence on normal matter that we can measure even if we cannot see it directly. Clusters of galaxies do not fly apart. The most distant stars in from the center of a galaxy do not move more slowly than those stars somewhat closer. Furthermore, light passing through a galaxy is bent as though it had passed through a lens. The amount of bending indicates the amount and distribution of the matter present, which points to the presence of a substantial non-luminous component.
From simulations, scientists expect that dark matter is “cold” or slow-moving and has been since the universe was young. Such conditions allow galaxies and clusters of galaxies to form. “Hot” or fast-moving dark matter would be disruptive and not produce the large-scale structures we see in the universe today.
Candidates for dark matter include Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), axions, gravitinos, primordial black holes, or some combination of these. WIMPs may be able to pass through normal matter almost entirely without detection but produce high-energy gamma-rays when they collide with one another. Axions are hypothetical particles that could solve the problem of why matter and antimatter did not completely cancel one another in the early universe. Gravitinos are associated with theoretical efforts to combine the standard models of particle physics with those of gravitation. Primordial black holes are created from normal matter compressed into such an extreme state that light cannot escape from their surfaces. In the early universe, conditions may have created black holes with a wider range of masses than either the stellar remnants or the active galactic nuclei (AGN) we detect now. None of these candidates has been conclusively detected nor conclusively eliminated. However, in some cases, rigorous limits have been set, or new theories have reshaped our expectations for a contender.
By mapping the distributions of luminous matter and evaluating gravitational lens of the largest possible scale, scientists expect to eventually unlock the mystery of dark matter. The Rubin Observatory in Chile has just begun its survey. In addition, the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission started mapping galaxies out to 10 billion light-years across one-third of the sky in 2024 with a planned six-year mission. It will build a history of how the universe evolved over the past 10 billion years under the influence of dark matter, dark energy, and gravity. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman telescope was scheduled to launch in 2027 with a focus on dark energy and exoplanets. Nancy Roman (1925-2018) was a stellar astronomer and first NASA’s chief of Astronomy, who championed the telescope that became the Hubble Space Telescope. However, the fate of her namesake is uncertain in the current NASA budget.
Although we have much to learn about dark matter, scientists estimate that this poorly understood but potent form of matter comprises about 27% of the universe. |
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Rubin and the Rotation Curves
By Jennifer Bartlett
| | | Vera Florence Rubin (1928-2016) nee Cooper studied astronomy at Vassar while working summers at the Naval Research Laboratory, earning her Bachelor’s degree in 1948. She joined her husband a mathematician at Cornell, where she earned her Master’s degree in 1950 shortly after having her first child. She earned her Ph.D. under George Gamow (1904-1968) at Georgetown University in 1954. She taught at Georgetown for 10 years while raising four children, include Judith Sharn Young (1952-2014) who would also become a professional astronomer. In 1965, Rubin moved to the Carnegie Institution Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, where she worked with W. Kent Ford (1931-2023).
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In 1962, Rubin published work with her Georgetown graduate students showing that the speed with which stars orbit the center of the Milky Way does not decrease with distance, the way the speed of planets orbiting the Sun does. Instead, the speed remains nearly constant or appears as a flat curve on graph of rotate rate versus distance. In 1970, she and Ford published work on the Andromeda Galaxy measuring the motions of ionized hydrogen clouds orbiting the galactic center at different distances. In this galaxy, they also found a constant rotation curve suggesting that the matter was distributed throughout the galaxy and not concentrated in the center. However, the amount of mass required was more than ten times that estimated from the stars and gas observed. Further work on other galaxies confirmed this picture of unseen matter exerting a gravitational influence on the motions within galaxies. Rubin provided convincing observational evidence of the “dark matter” first hypothesized by Fritz Zwicky (1898-1974) to explain motions in the Coma Cluster of galaxies.
Named in her honor, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory had its first light in June. Its 8.4-meter (27.6-ft) telescope is located on Cerro Pachón in Chile. Its primary goal is understanding dark matter by studying galaxy properties and distributions. However, it will survey the southern hemisphere sky in excellent detail for 10 years, imaging the entire sky every three days. Doing so will provide a wealth of data for discovering and studying small Solar System bodies, mapping our Milky Way Galaxy, and measuring how different objects change position and brightness over several years. It began science operations in October. Funding for this program is provided by the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy. |
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This message has been sent to you from the Friends of Arlington's Planetarium.
Friends of Arlington's David M. Brown Planetarium
P.O. Box 7029
Arlington, VA 22207 USA
Copyright (C) 2025 Friends of Arlington's David M. Brown Planetarium (FOAP). All rights reserved.
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