Iman Adhami Corsair

Planetarium Director Jon Hodge gives brief lecture on the show "From Stardust to Us," on Friday .

• The Planetarium's newest presentation, "From Stardust To Us," chronicles the lives of stars and how these affect the lives of their neighbors.

The 50-seat auditorium of the John Drescher Planetarium was once again filled to capacity last Friday night for a lecture and presentation entitled "From Stardust to Us."

The audience of families, college students and astronomy enthusiasts settled into their plush, tilted seats for a lesson in interstellar chemistry and a rare view of the stars unencumbered by the lights of the city.

Planetarium director Jon Hodge narrated the program from his control booth, much like the proverbial man-behind-the-curtain, infusing the program with expert commentary and the occasional joke.

"Many of you may be wondering if we will refer to the string theory as seen on PBS, but not tonight," Hodge said. "That is a subject easily unraveled."

The 32-year-old Planetarium presents a new show every calendar month, with the last Friday of each month acting as a finale.

Iman Adhami Corsair

Outer space beauty, "From Stardust to Us," a show at the Drescher Hall Planetarium, features many images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope.

In the finale events, a high-profile guest speaker is invited and the group moves into the bigger auditorium in SMC's Science Complex.

Next in line to speak is Michelle Thaller on Nov. 21. The NASA scientist will talk about infrared telescopes.

Regular Friday shows begin at 7 p.m. with a general interest presentation entitled "The Night Sky," before moving into more specific topic presentations at 8 p.m.

Last Friday, SMC student Michelle Johnson attended the 8 p.m. show "Stardust to Us."

"I'm interested to learn what they're doing up there," Johnson said. "But I've never taken an astronomy class."

"I am here because I want to expand my horizons with astronomy," joked Joseph Nguyen of Pamona.

"From Stardust to Us" outlined the life cycle of stars and the way in which reactions within stars generate the chemical building blocks of life, such as carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

According to last Friday's presentation, the nearest star to Earth is the sun, and it is 4 1/2 billion years old. Thermonuclear fusion in the sun's core is the way it produces energy. Eventually, this process will cause the sun to expand, its outer layers consuming Mercury, Venus, and possibly, Earth.

"At that point, the party will be over," Hodge joked.

According to the presentation, certain elements are only produced in planetary explosions called Supernovas.

As stars die, they reach a point where they cannot sustain their own gravity any longer; they explode in what Hodge described as a "Technicolor tombstone."

The death will light up the stars to the brightness of 100,000 suns. According to Hodge, at that point, they release as much energy as exists in the rest of the universe combined. The heaviest elements in the universe are created in this way.

Hodge has directed the Planetarium for the last 24 years, and it is clearly a labor of love. He has been writing and presenting shows for children and adults for decades, both at the Griffith Observatory and at SMC.

Hodge said that he cannot remember a time when he hasn't been deeply fascinated by astronomy, and that he believes that to gain a sense of it can give "you a new perspective on life."

"People can get too easily bound up in their day to day things, always looking down, both in the literal and the metaphorical sense," Hodge said. "It's good to look up once in a while."

Tickets are $5 each, and parking is free for the shows.