Star Gazers
| Star Gazers | |
|---|---|
Title screen for Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler, showing the starhustler.com URL before the name change in 1997
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| Also known as | 'Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler (1976–1997), Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer (1997–2011) |
| Starring |
Jack Foley Horkheimer (Host, 1976–2010), Chris Trigg (Guest host 2010), Ed Romano (Guest host 2011), Dean Regas (co-host 2010–present), James Albury (co-host 2011–present), Marlene Hidalgo (co-host 2011-2014) |
| Theme music composer | Claude Debussy (1976-2011) |
| Opening theme | "Arabesque No. 1" performed by Isao Tomita (1976–2011) |
| Country of origin | USA |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 40 |
| No. of episodes | 1,950+ |
| Production | |
| Location(s) | Miami, Florida |
| Camera setup | Green Screen |
| Running time | 0:05 or 0:01 (per episode), 52 episodes yearly |
| Release | |
| Original network | WPBT; syndicated to PBS stations |
| Picture format | 480i SDTV |
| Original release | November 6, 1976 – Present (40 years, 259 days) |
| External links | |
| Website | stargazersonline |
Star Gazers (formerly known as Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler and later Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer) is a five-minute astronomy show on American public television previously hosted by Jack Foley Horkheimer, executive director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium. After his death in 2010 from a respiratory illness from which he had suffered since childhood, a series of guest astronomers hosted until 2011, when Dean Regas, James Albury and Marlene Hidalgo became permanent co-hosts. On the weekly program, the host informs the viewer of significant astronomical events for the upcoming week, including key constellations, stars and planets, lunar eclipses and conjunctions, as well as historical and scientific information about these events.
The program is available free to all Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) public television stations, educational institutions and astronomy clubs. A month of episodes can be recorded from a satellite feed which occurs approximately two weeks before the official broadcast dates.
In 1964, Jack Horkheimer started working at the Miami Space Transit Planetarium for the Miami Museum of Science after meeting the museum's president, Arthur Smith. By the early 1970s, he was appearing on news programs talking about astronomy. He was approached by Florida's PBS affiliate, WPBT, to do a series of half-hour programs about astronomy, titled Horkheimer's Heavens. Horkheimer agreed on the condition that WPBT help him create a series of 5-minute shows on stargazing. This was the beginning of Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler.
The show debuted on November 6, 1976 on Florida public television. From 1976 until 1985, the show was very studious, with Horkheimer being calm and speaking quietly like an educator rather than an entertainer. This changed in 1985 after the show's executive producer, Ed Waglin, told Horkheimer that he needed to appeal to a general audience, rather than to astronomers.
In May 1985, the show went national, being broadcast on PBS stations around the United States with the enthusiastic Horkheimer that most people are familiar with. For the first two years of the national broadcast, Horkheimer hated the show and would not watch it, saying, "Well this is certainly different from any Jack Horkheimer that I know." After that, Horkheimer realized that he was playing a character in order to generate enthusiasm for the show. The show started broadcasting in foreign markets in 1989.
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