The planetarium offers a wide array of immersive and unique shows every week, and has improved the quality of these events due to renovations done to the space in 2022.
The university’s planetarium coordinator, Max Galbraith, is excited by the latest changes. As the planetarium gets new systems and renovations, they are able to simulate and put on more immersive shows for their audiences.
“We are just shy of 4k theater, and we have a lot of new capabilities as far as material presentations and virtual reality and everything like that,” Galbraith said.
The shows are realistic and artistically done, and make for an exciting experience for viewers.
“We are capable of projecting the night sky and simulating historical and future astronomical or celestial events, which is really useful for our astronomy labs, and for different shows,” Galbraith said.“We can also do a lot of digital dome sort of things. That gives us the ability to look at datasets, whether they’re from NOAA or NASA of the Earth and other planets.”
The Planetarium also tries to curate unique experiences specifically for its diverse audiences using their own equipment and resources.
“We custom build our shows with our own photography and then also datasets so that we can really just build our own programs out about anything,” Galbraith said.
The planetarium hosts shows every week, and intends to feature shows relevant to current events and holidays.
“We have an average of three shows a week. So that gives us 12 public shows a month. And, on average, sometimes we might have more for special events,” Galbraith said.
The planetarium’s architecture is designed to enhance the viewing experience.
“The entire hemisphere can be either a panoramic image, and then we can display you know montages or collages of images across the dome to also kind of give the viewer a more immersive experience into different things.” Galbraith said.
The planetarium’s next showing, called “Astrobiology,” will be Friday Jan. 27, at 8pm. Further shows will be “Distant Worlds: Alien Life” and “Liquid Sky: Electronica” on Jan. 28 at 2pm.
