Can the world's quirkiest planetarium be saved?
Keith Uhlig , USA TODAY NETWORK-WisconsinPublished 7:42 a.m. CT April 13, 2017 | Updated
6:04 p.m. CT April 13, 2017 (Photo: Tyler Rickenbach/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)
MONICO - The
two-ton, 22-foot-diameter globe creaks and groans as it swivels at an
angle carefully calibrated to match the Earth's position in the solar system.
You're sitting on a circular bench that allows you to lean back and gaze
into the blank white dome, accompanied by maybe 20 other people. You're in
the Kovac
Planetarium, the world's largest mechanical planetarium, and
an hour-long astronomy show is about to begin. The planetarium's creator,
builder and owner Frank Kovac dims the lights and as the space
grows dark, it feels as if he's lifted a curtain to reveal the heavens. The
beauty and seeming vastness of it all catches you by surprise and you let out
an involuntary gasp: "Ooooh. Wow." About 5,000
stars begin to shine inside the dome. Kovac painted each one using a small
brush and glow-in-the-dark paint. He stood on a ladder and dabbed the paint on
in the inside of the globe, star by star. Thicker paint made brighter stars.
The Milky Way was sponged on. The planetarium is decidedly and charmingly
low-tech, built mostly with materials anyone can buy at Menard's — plywood,
framing lumber and caster wheels. But Kovac used a high-quality
fluorescent paint costing hundreds of dollars per gallon to create the
stars, making them the most sophisticated — but still decidedly
analog — aspect of the Kovac Planetarium. They look so real they seem to
twinkle. The Kovac
Planetarium is located about 20 miles east of Rhinelander, on the edge of heavy
tourist country but off the beaten path. The closest town is the unincorporated
hamlet of Monico, population 309 in 2010. The planetarium itself is nestled
among a cluster of country homes that were built off the gravel Mud Creek
Road that winds into the woods north of Highway 8. A series of signs point
visitors in the right direction as they move through a series of forks on the
road. Even though it's
secluded, the Kovac Planetarium, is a tour de force showpiece of amateur
engineering, science showmanship and offbeat art. National media outlets
such as CBS News, NPR and Popular Mechanics have spotlighted it as a
one-of-a-kind destination, and people from all over the real planet have come
to visit. But now the
Kovac Planetarium faces an existential crisis; as a business it is
sinking. Kovac, who lives in a house behind his planetarium, borrowed more
than $100,000 to build it. His hope had been to make enough money from
admission fees ($12 for adults, $10 for seniors and $8 for children) to
pay the debt off. He plays host to groups of 24 at a time, but has no set
schedule of shows. People call for reservations, and Kovac schedules shows as
called for by demand. Spring and summers are pretty busy, he said, but the slow
winter traffic has been hurting his bottom line. If nothing
changes, Kovac plans to put his beloved creation, including the land and his
home, up for sale sometime during the summer or early fall. "I don't
really want to sell it, but I might be forced to," Kovac said. "I
followed my dream, and now it's a mountain of debt." Mapping the
stars When you look up
at the night skies in Wisconsin's Northwoods, it opens your
imagination. The light pollution is minimal up there, and you can see the
band of the Milky Way. If you're lucky, you can see the northern lights
shimmering off in the horizon. It gets you wondering about your purpose and
place in the universe. It's that kind
of thinking that energizes Kovac and led him into his own personal brand of
obsession. The 51-year-old
Kovac built the planetarium itself over the course of five years, from
1997 to 2002. He worked at a Rhinelander paper mill at the time, and he did the
bulk of the planetarium construction on his own during his off hours. He
enlisted friends, coworkers and neighbors when he needed outside expertise or a
helping hand. The planetarium
itself is fascinating because of its basic design and construction, an artisan
throwback to old-school carpentry skills. The round globe
with the open bottom was built using lumber as a frame and plywood
sheathing, a series of 24 long panels with arcs for sides. Those
panels bend together to form a sphere. The globe sits
on a tilted base, and the base sits on a series of wheels allowing it to swivel
on its axis. It's driven by a single electric motor and a wheel that abuts
the base of the globe. Friction between the motor, the wheel and the globe's
base turns the globe. The entire machine is stabilized by a cable that is
attached to the roof of the building that surrounds the planetarium. The planetarium,
which stands about two stories high, can hold groups of about 24 people. Kovac, a
youthful, trim man with a soft voice and low-key manner, used the construction
skills he learned from high school shop classes, a stint in the U.S. Air Force
and working in the paper mill to build the project. It was done without any
formal plans, he said, but he had a vision in his mind about what he wanted the
planetarium to be. The planetarium
design is a loose mashup of concepts he gleaned from old-school sky maps, globes and his experience of painting
stars on his bedroom ceiling when he was a kid. "It's
basically taking a map of the stars and making it big enough to get people
inside," Kovac said. Kovac grew up in
Chicago, where his father was a doorman and a maintenance worker in a downtown
building. The elder Kovac, Frank Sr., encouraged his son to work with his hands
and his mind. When Frank Kovac Sr. gave his son a telescope, the boy saw the
moon close up and something clicked. "You know,
you look at the moon, and you see the craters. But there's more beyond the
moon. Then I was thinking about how big the sun is compared to Earth and then
other stars out there," Kovac said. The 1980 TV
miniseries "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan magnified the allure of space
when he was a young teenager. Since then, Kovac's head, heart and spirit have
always been among the stars. "It's just
the wonder of the vastness out there," Kovac said. The Air Force
brought him to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the late 1980s. He found the
northern sky so beguiling that he looked for work in the Northwoods, eventually
landing a job at the paper mill. He bought his piece of property out in the
middle of nowhere to enable even more stargazing. Kovac loved
astronomy so much he felt compelled to share and teach others, and he became a
kind of astronomy evangelist. He began giving star watching lessons. It
was cloudy one night in 1996 when he spoke to a group of Boy Scouts, and it's
hard to imagine that they were more disappointed than he was at not being
able to see the constellations. The idea for the
Kovac Planetarium was born. "I envisioned
this all before it was here," Kovac said. Kovac is single
and has never been married. "I don't know of anybody who would have put up
with me, with all this," he said, waving a hand around the planetarium. In
a sense, the community of visitors to his planetarium is his family. An engine for imagination As a machine,
the Kovac Planetarium is enthralling. "It's
primitive, but complex. This is quite a feat. I'm impressed," said Barry
Morgan of Merrill, an engineer who is a project manager for AGRA Industries of
Merrill, which produces buildings and storage tanks for feed, seed and
fertilizer mills and for bio-mass fuel producers. He and his family were
visiting the planetarium for one of Kovac's late March Saturday afternoon
shows. Morgan isn't the
only one. Kovac recently played host to a youth group that aims to help kids
find careers and motivate them to excel. He told them about the building
process, highlighting the hard work and resilience it took to make his dream a
reality. The idea, he said, was to provide a role model and inspiration. Morgan visited
the Kovac Planetarium on a Saturday afternoon in late March. He and his wife,
Kelli, were accompanied by their four sons, Ian, 11; Seth, 9; Jameson, 7; and
Vince, 5. Kelli had seen
some YouTube videos about the planetarium and wanted the boys to see it
firsthand. The building
that houses the planetarium is comfortable. There are bathrooms, air
conditioning and heating. Kovac decorated with a variety of items designed to
stimulate minds, mostly aimed at children. There are models of the solar
system, for example, and inspirational posters. One of Kovac's favorite items
is a poster of Einstein, with a quote attributed to him: "Imagination is
more important than knowledge." "My mother
gave me that poster," Kovac said. "See how he's looking at the
planetarium and smiling? Of course, it's not totally true. Knowledge is
important, too." Kovac's
astronomy shows last about an hour. He uses the planetarium to speak about the
vastness of the universe, explaining and showing different planets and stars.
He points out constellations. He explains the significance of the North Star. His presentation
is peppered with droll jokes. One example: "Gravity always gets me
down." It's like
sitting in a classroom with a favorite teacher who is showing a cool
experiment. Kovac speaks
without notes. But he will use a small laptop to project short films, mostly
from NASA, and images. The overriding
theme of each presentation, of the entire endeavor, is to stir the curiosity of
visitors of all ages, but especially children. As he completed his
March show, Kovac sent his audience off by urging them to get curious
about space. "We have
the quest for knowledge," he said. "So go out and sit in a lawn chair
and look at the night sky. You don't need a lot of fancy equipment. Even a pair
of binoculars can help you see planets and the moon." A future in doubt The idea that
Kovac would have to sell and leave the Kovac Planetarium is heartbreaking. Frank Kovac, builder and founder of Kovac Planetarium, talks to USA TODAY
NETWORK-Wisconsin reporter, Keith Uhlig about the mechanics behind the
planetarium on March 25, 2017. (Photo: Tyler Rickenbach/USA TODAY
NETWORK-Wisconsin) He's not exactly
sure when he will put the property up for sale. He's begun casting about for
real estate agents, and he has his own ideas about what could happen to the
planetarium. Ideally, he
would find a buyer who would allow him to continue giving the tours and
presentations. "I would
love to be involved somehow," he said. At the very
least, the buyer should have to have an appreciation of what the planetarium is
and what it means. Kovac has a deep
pride in what he's built, and he should. He had an idea; he worked long
and hard to see it come to fruition. And it turned out better than he could
have hoped. "It's a
work of art now," Kovac said. "People say it's an engineering
masterpiece. There is no other one like it in the world." Keith Uhlig: 715-845-0651 or kuhlig@gannett.com; on Twitter @UhligK. Visit the world's largest mechanical planetarium
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