Horizons Unlimited picked the perfect person in its quest to get noticed.

Joe Hopkins arrived in Salisbury Wednesday and spent all day Thursday tinkering with his laser system at the Margaret C. Woodson Planetarium.

When the lights went down and the music came up, Hopkins belted out the lyrics as his lasers danced on the planetarium dome.

“Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death …”

Hopkins’ laser light show, set to the music of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” promises to leave hundreds of Rowan County residents breathless as it plays in the Woodson Planetarium, which is part of the Rowan-Salisbury School System. In addition to the 10 Pink Floyd showings, a “Laser Fun” program aimed at family audiences also is scheduled for eight showings.

The fun starts Saturday in Horizons Unlimited’s attempt to showcase its unique facility.

“We want to remind people there is a planetarium in Salisbury,”said Cyndi Osterhus, director of Horizons Unlimited. “There’s a lot of people who still don’t know we exist.”

Not many of those people are children in elementary school. Horizons Unlimited sees some 20,000 children a year from Rowan-Salisbury and Davie County schools, educating students on the moon, the stars and the universe.

“We’re very unique. There’s not anything like this in the nation,”Osterhus said. “A lot of museums have education programs. We’re an education facility that has a museum-type experience.”

A 15-member advisory council governs Horizons Unlimited and occasionally opens the building to the public.

“We want to make them proud of their education system, that their child gets to experience something like this as a part of their education,”Osterhus said. “We’ll try to be open to the public three or four times a year.”

This year the advisory council turned to Hopkins, founder of Joe Hopkins Engineering, based in Bradenton, Fla. Hopkins’ relationship with Horizons began about 10 years ago when he updated the planetarium’s equipment, which his company has done in 630 facilities.

When he’s not working on the hardware end of things, Hopkins makes laser light shows, then rents the equipment to places like Horizons Unlimited. He personally created the “Dark Side of the Moon” and “Family Fun” shows that will be seen this week.

“It’s actually all done with mirrors and two lasers,”he explained, before thinking for a moment. “Perhaps a bit of technical know-how is thrust in there as well.”

The colorful Hopkins mixed his know-how with a dash of crazy glue and two liters of Diet Coke Thursday while adding the final touches to the laser assembly. The crazy glue reattached one of the mirrors. The Coke?

“I drink 4 1/2 to 6 gallons of Coke a day,”Hopkins said. “Gallons. Not liters.”

Hopkins saw his first laser light show in 1979 and finished his first one in 1981. Among his favorite creations are the “Laser Fun” show playing this week and one set to the music of ZZTopp.

The 75-seat planetarium and 30-foot dome at Horizons Unlimited often can’t compete with the likes of Charlotte’s Discovery Place, which featured a Pink Floyd laser light show this summer.

That’s where Hopkins comes in.

“A forte of our company is to be able to bring things like this to smaller planetariums. Ten years ago, there was no way a school system planetarium even could have looked at lasers,”Hopkins said. “Just because you happen to live in Salisbury, North Carolina, doesn’t mean you should have to travel to a large city to do something you want.”

Of course, some people in the big cities tend to be more familiar with the music of Pink Floyd.

“A lot of people in Salisbury have no idea who Pink Floyd is,”Osterhus said. “When people told me that, I tell them this is an opportunity to grow. We hopeSalisbury will buy into it.”

For the less brave in the area, the “Laser Fun” show features music by kids groups, fun sing-a-longs and tunes that everyone will recognize, like the baseball classic, “Centerfield.”

“TheLaser Fun show is geared more toward families,”said Patsy Wilson, a planetarium educator. “It’s a potpourri of fun music.”

At a cost of just $4, to offset the cost of renting Hopkins’ laser equipment, Osterhus andWilson are hoping the laser light shows are well received. Big crowds over the next week could lead to more shows like this one.

“We’re aiming for the stars —no pun intended,”Wilson said. “I think people will really have a good time.”

Tickets for all shows are available at the door. All tickets are $4 except for children younger than 2 who sit in a parent’s lap. Refractory glasses, which turn the one laser image into 16, can be purchased for $1.

Children younger than 12 should be accompanied by an adult.