When the Marlboro High School opened in 1967 a large domed Planetarium was part of the new building, which was then and still is a rarity for a high school. Just by sitting back and looking up, students can instantly be “transported” to the other side of the planet or to worlds millions of light years away. They are able to see, up close, asteroids, moons, the rings of Saturn, comets and the even the red surface of Mars, to name just a few of the phenomena that can be projected inside the dome. It appears that the planetarium was included because the High School was built during the space race with Russia and money was available to promote education in astronomy.

High School Science Department Chairman Robert M. DeMarco teaches Earth Science and Astronomy and is the Director of the Planetarium. He said the previous SciDome system was more than 12 years old and was experiencing numerous computer hardware problems, while winding its way toward obsolescence. Last October it was replaced with a new and advanced system called Digistar 7 by Spitz Inc., from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. This is the same company that installed the original opto-mechanical system more than 50 years ago. Every summer DeMarco travels to the company’s headquarters for a week of training in the operation of the Digistar 7 machine.

The system consists of an operator’s console that has two advanced computers working in concert along with multiple monitors and controls, an iPad, and a state of the art surround sound audio system. A 4K laser phosphor projector stands in the middle of the room, which is capable of presenting tack sharp images of the night sky and beyond to the viewer. It is connected to the internet, which allows instant updates in real time to weather events, tornadoes, earthquakes, changes to the polar ice caps or any significant occurrence in space.

“Earth Science is really closely connected to all of these things we’re discussing, so it’s not just astronomy classes,” he said, adding that students are required to take earth science, and a third of the Regents exam is astronomy.

DeMarco hosts all of the 1st and 5th grade students from the elementary school, all 6th grace middle school students, and has about 90 high school students on a daily basis who are taking elective Astronomy and College Astronomy classes. Several times a year the faculty also takes advantage of the Planetarium by hosting a few adult education classes at the Planetarium.

In a subsequent interview, DeMarco said he tells his students that the nearest galaxy to earth is 2.5 million light years away and many others are even father. He also tells them that light travels 186,000 miles a second and that they are actually looking back in time when looking at stars or other galaxies. He said all of this usually elicits a “wow” factor from the students.

DeMarco hopes to impart to his students, “the basics on how the sky works, so when they’re standing on their back patio they are able to explain some basics to their own kids and point out the constellations in the night sky, how the sun changes in the seasons, or just have a better understanding of earth’s place, both in the solar system and our solar system’s place in the galaxy.”

DeMarco often passes around an x-box controller to the class that allows students, “to navigate and travel anywhere. You can hop between planets, fly out of the solar system or the galaxy and just cruise around the universe.” He said everything they see is, “represented accurately as it would actually be and they really love the scale comparisons we often show – earth compared to other planets, earth compared to the sun, then the sun compared to other stars and how big that is to a solar system. They are in awe because I think they are realizing that we are just a little speck going around another little speck that goes around countless other little specks.”

DeMarco said students get a special thrill when they see a solar eclipse up close or the northern lights in Iceland.

“We can recreate all of these things instead of just telling them about it, you can show them,” he said, adding that there are programs that can also bring the students back or forward in time up to 99,000 years and show what our universe looked like or perhaps will look like on a specific date.

DeMarco also talks to the students about climate change, using a program through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] that highlights ocean temperatures, CO2 levels and graphs of climate trends and changes, past and present.

DeMarco has been teaching in Marlboro for the past 17 years.

“I love every minute of it here and I’ve been blessed to work at this place and I love these kids,” he said. “My house is in the district and my two boys go to Marlboro Elementary. This is my all, this place is my everything, so that’s why I show up every day and give it my best.”