Monet is the president of Friends of Arlington’s Donald M. Brown Planetarium, a group that’s raising funds to fix the planetarium, which Arlington County might shut down after a series of sweeping budget cuts. An astronomer herself, Monet recently retired from the Naval Observatory, and credits the planetarium for piquing her interest in the stars in high school. Tell me about your first visit to the planetarium. I went to Washington and Lee [high school], and our class went to visit the planetarium. … I’d always been interested in astronomy, but I was thinking in that stage in my life that I’d probably go into law as a career. But I went to the planetarium with my class and … it was this mind-blowing experience.
Former Arlington School Board Chairman Preston Caruthers recently gave you $100,000, and now you’re using it to raise more money?
He suggested in addition to accepting the funds that he had given us, we try to leverage those funds to do more good with them. The idea of a challenge was his, that we offer a matching challenge for all donations up to $100,000. So if someone gives a donation now, the value of the donation will be doubled by the Caruthers gift.
How do you plan on spending the donation money?
The goal is to modernize the planetarium and really take it to the next generation as a science and education center. Right now it’s the traditional, old-fashioned planetarium with a star projector that simulates the appearance of the night sky. Modern planetariums now use digital projectors that can project anything on the dome. There are programs available now that will allow you to simulate being in the interior of the Earth, or under the ocean, or in space looking back at the Earth. It really captivates kids in a whole new way.
Ben Giles
