"Boston - and indeed any planetarium wanting to do more than project stars and point out constellations - has no choice but to adopt it, or go the way of the dinosaurs." "Full-dome video projection of computer graphics is the only game in town these days," Petersen explains. My first question was: "What took you so long?" According to Mark Petersen of Loch Ness Productions, an independent producer of planetarium shows, nearly 700 sky theaters worldwide already offer full-dome video, not counting the ones with tilted or portable screens.Īn audience at the newly transformed Charles Hayden Planetarium in Boston is immersed in a full-dome video presentation. Trust me, it creates a 6½-magnitude sky so real that you'll be tempted to bring your binoculars along for a closer look. One of only two in the U.S., the Zeiss's burnished-metal orb uses fiber-optic technology to fire 9,100 razor-sharp pinpoints onto the newly resurfaced dome. Rabkin and Hayden's staff avoided incurring the wrath of planetarium purists by marrying a state-of-the-art Zeiss Starmaster projector, imported from Germany, with a crisp 16-megapixel digital video system, imported from Sky-Skan in neighboring New Hampshire. The full-dome digital systems rolled out during the 1990s were hindered by fuzzy stars and often-ragged video. It's immersive, to be sure, but not always a true-sky experience. The clear trend among big-city planetariums (or planetaria, depending on your taste) has been to junk all the banks of Kodak slide carousels in favor of full-dome digital projection. Opened in 1958, the Charles Hayden Planetarium (white dome at right) at Boston's Museum of Science has attracted more than 11 million visitors.Įven with funding secured, the technological tasks were formidable. "We felt our team was strong, and I had a strong relationship with them," he explains. ![]() The void at the top was filled by David Rabkin, the museum's director of current science and technology. ![]() The much-needed renovation was supposed to be unveiled two years ago (and had been on the drawing board for a decade) but stalled partly for lack of funding and partly due to the departure of planetarium director Robin Symonds. New England's preeminent star dome, whose 57-foot diameter is nearly equal to London's, now can razzle and dazzle as well as any planetarium in the world. A year ago Boston's Charles Hayden Planetarium closed for a promised $9 million physical and technological transformation - and I'm happy to report that its doors have once again opened wide to the public. I am not making this up.īut a shuttered star theater isn't always bad news. Today the huge dome boasts an action-packed "experience" that, among other things, explores how Marilyn Monroe and other celebrities are viewed by aliens. ![]() A sorry sight: London's main planetarium is now part of Madame Tussaud's entertainment complex.
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