LEHIGH TWP., Pa. — Melanie Biringer still remembers how excited she felt the day she walked into her elementary school gym and saw a giant inflatable silver bubble.
- Melanie Biringer started a new mobile planetarium business, Constellation Station
- She's the only StarLab ambassador in the Lehigh Valley
- A astronomy enthusiast, she hopes to inspire and educate students
“Knowing like, ‘It's the day we're going to StarLab. We're going to go see the stars,'” Biringer said. “You would crawl into the bubble, into the tunnel and you'd get inside this inflatable dome. And I remember seeing a show that specifically talked about the constellations.
“... Truly, the memory stuck with me to this day more than maybe anything else from fourth or fifth grade. I couldn't tell you what grade it actually was — but I remember the feeling of being in that bubble.”
More than two decades later, Biringer is working to make the stars more accessible to all children across the Lehigh Valley through her new business, Constellation Station. Biringer, who has a daughter with autism, launched the business this year with a modern dome to increase physical accessibility and give back to the special needs community.
“I'm a stay-at-home mom of two young kids and it's hard to reenter the workforce and when you have kids, it’s not easy and their schedules are constantly changing,” said Biringer. She and her husband, Matthew, have a 7-year-old daughter, Abby, and 3-year-old son, Henry. “I had to think creatively to find work that would allow for the schedule of [Abby’s] services and her needs as well as the schedule of the school year.
“Working for myself seemed the best option.”
When StarLab came to mind, it was a “no-brainer,” she said — a job that would connect her interests in space and astronomy with education, as well as grow her connection with the local special needs community.
Unlike decades ago, modern mobile planetariums have been designed with accessibility in mind. No longer do participants need to physically crawl through a tunnel to experience the dome.
"I’m hoping to connect with local organizations and the intermediate units in the region to be a continuing resource for a fun, unique, experience that some of these individuals with special needs wouldn’t otherwise have access to."Melanie Biringer, owner of Constellation Station
“Constellation Station is something that can be accessible to anyone,” she said. “My autistic daughter loves being inside the big bubble. I’m hoping to connect with local organizations and the intermediate units in the region to be a continuing resource for a fun, unique, experience that some of these individuals with special needs wouldn’t otherwise have access to.”
‘That fully-immersive learning experience’
Biringer’s mobile planetarium comes from StarLab, a Florida-based education supply company. Lauren O’Brien, vice president or marketing for Science Interactive Group, StarLab’s parent company, said the kit comes with everything needed to get started.
“It comes with the dome, the projector, the curriculum – really everything you need to have that fully-immersive educational experience,” O’Brien said.
In addition to making the domes more physically accessible, having a mobile planetarium itself creates opportunities for students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to travel to visit one.
“We want to make this type of educational experience as accessible to as many students as we can,” she said. “It's also the idea that not everybody is at a school that has their own planetarium, or has the funding to go to a museum or planetarium nearby. So just bring that opportunity itself and extend more access to it.”
There are about a dozen people across the U.S. like Biringer, who have become StarLab ambassadors with their own kits, O’Brien said. It’s more common for a school or school district to purchase them.
“The portable planetarium is truly so portable that everything I just described of the dome and a projector and the laptop — it could pack down into a suitcase that fits into a Prius,” she said. “It's really a very portable, all inclusive system, so it's easy for schools and districts to share that resource.”
Chris Vaughan, an astronomer and Earth scientist with Astrogeo.ca, based near Toronto, helped to train Biringer. He’s been using a mobile planetarium for more than five years.
“There are things that you can show in a planetarium that can really drive home the concepts that are tough to do in a classroom on a blackboard or on a smart board, because you can recreate the night sky, and you could show the motion of the heavens and the motion of the moon,” he said. “And really quickly and very impactfully convey those concepts.”
‘It makes dreamers out of anybody’
Biringer’s first event with the mobile planetarium was in early May during Lehigh Valley Space Fest at Paxinosa Elementary School in Easton’s West Ward.
“It was the first one with live people,” Biringer said. “I've been practicing in my dining room for a few weeks and months, and working through it with all the projections on the ceiling.”
Marty McGuire, one of the event’s organizers, said it was “a huge hit.”
“People lined up and were quite excited to experience that,” said McGuire, a NASA Solar System Ambassador also known as the Backyard Astronomy Guy. “It's a great educational method to share with people because they can recreate an experience that's hard to get in your own backyard.
“So, there's a lot of excitement for seeing the different visuals and sessions that the mobile planetarium had.”
The experience can be “powerful” and “breathtaking,” McGuire said.
“Some of the photos we saw from the event and people in the planetarium were really inspiring,” he said. “It gets people to recognize there's a much bigger world above us, out there beyond our world. It makes dreamers out of anybody, I think, who attends and can sit inside a mobile planetarium.”
It was a learning experience for her, too, Biringer said, adding there “were a ton of people in and out” of the dome during the event.
“It was a good lesson for me in terms of, How are we going to handle lots of people if we're at something like that? How many people can I really fit comfortably? What is the sound like? How can I tweak some things in front of a live audience so that when I go to these schools and things I’m better prepared?
“That was a wonderful, wonderful experience to do that.”
For more information, visit constellation-station.com.
