CUPERTINO -- The lights went down in the cavernous theater and the children gasped with excitement. They had waited weeks for the show. They were bouncing in their chairs, whispering to friends, gazing up at the screen with big smiles.

The latest Disney movie? "Iron Man"? "Hunger Games"?

Hardly. Today's marquee attraction wasn't about cartoons or superheroes, but about eclipses and the moon's orbit, space travel and constellations. And the kids in attendance weren't the sons and daughters of Palo Alto tech entrepreneurs visiting an expensive private space camp. They were 114 third-graders, nearly all Latino, from Rocketship Si Se Puede Academy, an East San Jose elementary school where 91 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunches and 66 percent are English-language learners.

The planetarium's dome screen comes alive as students from Rocketship Si Se Puede visit Fujitsu Planetarium at De Anza College in Cupertino, Calif. on Friday, Oct. 18, 2013. (Jim Gensheimer, Bay Area News Group)

"Has anybody seen the moon lately?" said astronomer Karl von Ahnen.

Dozens of hands shot up. "What did it look like?" he asked. "Full moon!" shouted the kids, all wearing matching purple shirts. "That's right," he said. "It's big and bright right now. Let's talk about why it looks that way."

For the past three years, similar scenes have played out at the Fujitsu Planetarium at De Anza College in Cupertino. The facility, which last year hosted 30,000 Bay Area children in school field trips to supplement their class work and spark interest in science, has been able to drop the $5 per-student admission for schools in low-income areas, allowing roughly 3,000 kids a year who otherwise wouldn't have a chance to visit the planetarium to come for free.

But now the donations to fund the free program have run out. Dozens of teachers eager to immerse their 8- and 9-year-olds in hands-on science from schools across Santa Clara and San Mateo counties are being turned away.

"You feel like it's not fair. We all feel awful," said Caron Blinick, dean of community and continuing education at De Anza. "We know that for many of these students it's a critical part of their learning. Every student should have the same opportunity."

With help from Wish Book readers, the planetarium hopes to raise $15,000 so it can provide field trips to another 3,000 low-income children next year. They money funds staff time, utilities and other basic costs to run the facility, which was built in 1967 and upgraded in 2007 with state-of-the-art equipment.

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Wish Book: Astronomy field trips open up new horizons for students