Blogs - The Planetarium Network

Where's Galileo

I intended to keep a running monologue of Galileo's travels this International Year of Astronomy and obviously I have fallen behind. Since visiting the Space Telescope Institute, Galileo has gone to the Buhl Planetarium at the Carnegie Science Center, the Franklin Institute for the opening of "Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astonomy" and again for the Galileo symposium weekend, Six Flags America for Physics Day, the Casper Planetarium (while he was visiting schools in Casper, WY), The Virgi… Continue

Added by Mike Francis on June 27, 2009 at 7:57am — No Comments

All systems go!

I recently returned from my first large scale planetarium conference, the SEPA conference in Nahsville (which by the way was a complete BLAST). One thing struck me as interesting. When meeting new people the line of the conversation usually runs along the lines of introductions, where each person is from and then the.."what size is your dome?" and "what system are you running". I am hoping that now that I know more of these great people and have started some collaborations projects with them (o… Continue

Added by Rod_Kennedy on June 26, 2009 at 1:38pm — No Comments

David Dunlap Observatory Saved

Toronto RASC To Hold Public Viewings With 74-inch Telescope at David Dunlap Observatory
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 10:34
The big telescope at the David Dunlap Observatory is back in business. Under an agreement with the owners of the property, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Toronto Centre, now operates the 74-inch reflecting telescope and will begin providing public education and outreach programs. The first public viewing nights at the observatory will be held on July 18

… Continue

Added by Eric Briggs on June 19, 2009 at 12:00pm — No Comments

Success from Ogden

I am waiting to have the premiere of my Blender rough show "The Soccer Game" made into a movie then I will get to watch it on Ott Planetarium's Mediaglobe. Technology can be so much fun! Continue

Added by Jack L. Northrup on June 5, 2009 at 8:38am — No Comments

A Request for help from Romania

I'm not the person she should be asking - can anyone out there help her? Thanks! Sharon from Planetariu Bacau to sharon.shanks@gmail.com date Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 7:08 AM subject astronomy exhibition mailed-by yahoo.com signed-by yahoo.com hide details Apr 16 Reply Follow up message Hello, We are from a small Planetarium from Bacau, Romania. Our Planetarium is placed in a former water tower, and its exhibition space extends over three levels. We want to upgrade the permanent exhibition a… Continue

Added by Sharon Shanks on May 7, 2009 at 10:58pm — No Comments

Planetarium Lighting

Does anyone have a creative and relatively cheap solution for lighting under the dome so we can use the space for class work? We'd like to have enough light for reading, doing lab experiments, activities, etc...about 40 foot candles. We have looked into the RGBW systems but have heard that they don't really provide enough light for traditional class work. True? Besides, we aren't installing the traditional cove lighting system for quite sometime but will need to use the room for class work as so… Continue

Added by Jason Archer on April 23, 2009 at 3:33pm — No Comments

Looking for good deal on Spitz A3P (or perhaps 512 or later)

Greetings. I am leading a community effort to establish a planetarium in my rather small community (60k) that is home to the University of Iowa. There is interest in a facility and I am someone willing to do some work toward an interim planetarium as a demo facility. I would make the dome myself and have engineering and machining experience to assist in maintainance / improvement of equipment. I would like to ask all within "earshot" to perhaps help me locate a source of a working Spitz A3P pro… Continue

Added by Charles Miller on April 21, 2009 at 6:22pm — No Comments

Created a Twitter page for the planetarium.

You can find my tweats at www.twitter.com/cookplanetarium. Continue

Added by Bruce Brazell on March 28, 2009 at 3:30pm — No Comments

one step at a time for show conversion

As we learn more about the full dome environment in general and how Blender applies to it in particular, we are finding new ways to convert old slide based shows to full dome productions. And it got me thinking about concerns other planetarians have had about making the leap to full dome, specifically "how hard is it to convert shows?" The answer to that is probably lame but it is true, "how hard do you want it to be? I guess the real measure of how hard show conversion is, is how you lo… Continue

Added by Rod_Kennedy on March 17, 2009 at 1:24pm — No Comments

A cross post from my other blog...

I have had some great responses from the students and parents about our Great Observatories image of M101. One of the students made a comment about the combined image saying "That must be what it looks like to have Superman's vision." Continue

Added by Jack L. Northrup on March 8, 2009 at 9:23pm — No Comments

Fun differences between the screen and the dome

I just got done putting together an information piece on Comet Lulin. The problem we had was that people were expecting to see the cartoon comet image, not reality. Well I had this so that it looked great on the screen and was correctly warped. Run the presentation on the dome and all the images are vertically compressed about 20%. So back to the computer to get it right. Two more trips back and forth and finally it looked good. Then I showed it to my hostess and she said, "Jack, you spelled it… Continue

Added by Jack L. Northrup on February 27, 2009 at 9:07pm — No Comments

Gravitation: Zero. Flights to Ecstasy.

Delight of Dizziness… giving a spectator that very new feeling - a state of weightlessness Continue

Added by Daniel A. Freedman on February 20, 2009 at 3:17pm — No Comments

gotta love those software designers!

Don't you just love it when software designers re-tool a program and move features around within them, but don't tell anyone where the are going? So now all your tutorials, hot-key references and shortcuts are obsolete. I found this exact thing in the new version of Blender. Blender v 2.48a separated physics and particles into two separate areas and buttons that were once used to do things are GONE. For example, looking for a tutorial to give a character hair. In all the old tutorials you are s… Continue

Added by Rod_Kennedy on February 18, 2009 at 5:40pm — 5 Comments

conversion factor

Whenever a planetarium changes from a slide based format to full dome or all digital, the question always arises "what do we do with some of our really cool slide based shows?" The answer, "to convert or not to convert" is seldom as clear cut as the statement. Often there are some aspects of a show that are easier to convert than others. However, in the case of our own planetarium, we discovered that conversion gets easier with time (and skill). When the Casper Planetarium changed from a Spitz… Continue

Added by Rod_Kennedy on February 10, 2009 at 1:30pm — No Comments

Successful opening of Ghana Planetarium

We had a successful opening of the first public planetarium in West Africa, and the first digital planetarium in sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps the whole continent. Many of the guests had never been in a planetarium in their lives and they were just blown away by what the Mediaglobe could do. Then when we did a domecast with Uniview, they almost went supernova! It was quite a festive day and the planetarium building and surrounding area were festooned with brightly colored cloth and balloons. Astr… Continue

Added by Dave Weinrich on January 24, 2009 at 7:08am — No Comments

Looking for Spitz A3P Parts

I am in the processing of rebuilding an entire Spitz A3P "planet" portion (I have a star projector that I will mate to this). While I have the 6 planet analogs, I have little else. I am hoping that someone might be willing to part with (or sell at a REASONABLE price) any of the following. My goal is to donate this to a community science center, which is being pushed by me and a few others in my community. I am bearing all costs right now, so cannot afford big mark-ups. Here is my "wish list" f… Continue

Added by Charles Miller on January 23, 2009 at 9:05am — No Comments

Grand Opening of Ghana Planetarium

Akwaba, That means "welcome" in Ghana. Arrived here last night after a 24 hour flight from Minnesota. What a contrast in temperatures, going from a cold Midwest winter to a tropical climate. Please forgive any typing errors as I am sure they are due to jet lag. I am here for the grand opening of the Ghana Planetarium on Jan. 22nd. There have been many improvements since I was here last summer and I am looking forward to the event. I will be training Dr. Ashong and his staff to use a Starlab pr… Continue

Added by Dave Weinrich on January 17, 2009 at 6:25am — 2 Comments

Galileo to Visit the Space Telescope Science Institute

Galileo will be kicking off the International Year of Astronomy by visiting the Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD on Saturday, January 24, 2009. This will be part of the Starrytelling at the Institute day for their Youth for Astonomy and Engineering program. In addition to Galileo's lectures, there will be arts projects with Diane Tuckman, planetarium programs in the Maryland Science Center's St… Continue

Added by Mike Francis on January 3, 2009 at 3:58pm — No Comments

Link to article on historical Sri Lankan Astronomer

Surfing the internet, I came across an interesting article about a little known astronomer who observed in Sri Lanka over 100 years ago. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081221/Plus/sundaytimesplus_15.html He lived in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. In 2003 I had the opportunity to visit there with the retired director of the Colombo Planetarium, Mr. T.C. Samaranayaka (Sam). I had read about PB Molesworth and after a considerable search, we found his grave. In the late 1800's he had a 12 1/2 inch reflector an… Continue

Added by Dave Weinrich on December 23, 2008 at 10:02am — No Comments

It has to start some time...

This site has many wonderful features to help improve communication and cooperation in the planetarium community, like this blog. We should all start using these great features. I, for one, plan to blog for the good of the planetarium community as a whole. One the recent conversation on DomeL involved the challenges facing an increasing number of planetariums, content for low budget, fulldome systems. The discussion brought to light different points of view on fulldome content. The prevailing… Continue

Added by Jason Talley on December 11, 2008 at 12:49am — No Comments

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