Australasian Planetarium Society

There has been plenty of coverage in recent days of the opening of the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium following three months of upgrades. Here is ABC TV’s coverage on Saturday night:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-30/brisbane-planetarium-relaunches-after-million/4602344?section=qld

Mark Rigby

We are pleased to announce that Japan’s Ohira Tech president, Takayuki Ohira has confirmed his attendance at APS 2013 on 22/23 April 2013 at the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium, which has just installed an Ohira Tech Megastar-IIB optical star projector. Ohira Tech’s publicity manager, Keiko Owatari, will also attend.

As listed in the APS 2013 program posted previously, we will also have Sky-Skan, Inc, President Steve Savage attending from the USA.

For those involved in the planetarium field, this is a great opportunity to both see the Megastar and Sky-Skan DigtialSky systems. It also will be particularly valuable having the innovative Steve Savage and Takayuki Ohira here in our region if you wish to talk to them one-on-one. Here is more about Takayuki Ohira – http://www.megastar.jp/en/creator/

Some of you have met Steve Savage before and know of his passion for the planetarium field from the vendor side. In 2008, Steve became the first recipient of the International Planetarium Society’s TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION AWARD and has remarkable insight into the technology and data sets available to us.

Mark Rigby

After almost three hectic months of being closed for upgrades (including more disruptive major weather events), the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium opened to crowds on Saturday, 30 March 2013.

We received very good media coverage, including a long prime-time ABC TV news segment in the evening and TV coverage on Thursday night on Ten, radio.

We hope that as many of you as possible will be able to attend APS 2013 here in the Brisbane Planetarium in just three weeks and experience our new upgrades.

Below in no particular order are some of the changes in the Brisbane Planetarium:

• We gutted our Cosmic Skydome and displays areas.
• Installed new displays in the foyer and gallery, as well as re-doing our shop – all look much improved.
• Installed a new 12.5-m diameter Astro-Tec dome with a reflectivity of 44% versus the 35-year-old Zeiss dome’s 70% (better for the fulldome content). Less than one third of the number of panels as well.
• Installed the new Ohira Tech Megastar-IIB optical star projector (the first IIB model in the southern hemisphere and only the second Megastar in this hemisphere – there is a IIA model in Buenos Aires).
• Sky-Skan, which acted as overall prime contractor for the Skydome equipment and dome upgrades, including further improvements to their digital system installed in 2010, also built to our specific requirements a special lift for the Megastar and designed a new console. We also now have the addition of a manual panel for Sky-Skan’s DigitalSky control – so we have the choice of multiple interfaces, including keyboard and/or mouse. Sky-Skan has improved our software and loaded GIS data sets for Earth, the Moon and Mars. We also have scheduled further improvements before the end of the financial year in June.
• We sent our seats out for re-covering and increased the number by five to 133; wheelchair spaces have increased from three to five. Seating is now colour-coded to accommodate both omni-directional or uni-directional shows.
• We re-carpeted the Cosmic Skydome, including all the way up to the new lower profile LED lighting cove just below the springline. The old big coves are now gone and it looks so much better.

Mark Rigby
Curator, Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium

I have provided more details on planetarium/dome activity in 2012 in a written report that will be available at the APS 2013. But some might enjoy the following … you may be aware I on occasion do installation work in planetariums and museums, just a hobby really. But looking back on 2012 I did 6 planetariums installs, don’t know where I found the time! Some photos below, click for higher resolution version.

I use to think the Sri Sathya Sai Space Theatre (bottom image above) was one of the more colourful/unique planetarium dome exteriors but it has now been easily surpassed by the following. Not small at 12m diameter.

The character is Bhagwan Parashuram, 2 stories tall, the 6th incarnation of Vishnu who appears when the planet is in great danger. “…is considered by religious scholars to relieve the earth’s burden by exterminating the sinful, destructive and irreligious monarchs that pillaged its resources, and neglect their duties as kings.”.

Be warned!