Australasian Planetarium Society

After attending the IPS Council meeting in Montreal, I took the opportunity to visit the Charles Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Science (MOS) in Boston.  This was a particularly interesting visit for me, the Charles Hayden Planetarium is of similar size to the Melbourne Planetarium, attached to a Science Museum, and they produce their own shows.

I was very keen to meet with their Science Visualizer, Jason Fletcher, who is one of the four animators that work on their shows.  Jason has been at the planetarium and is a great advocate for sharing his production knowledge.  His Fulldome Blog (listed in the sidebar) is an excellent resource for anyone producing fulldome content.  It was great to meet Jason and talk production with someone who understands all of its complexities and challenges.

The team at the Charles Hayden Planetarium are great supporters of student production, and for the last few years have worked with students from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.  The Melbourne Planetarium screened their production Sentient at the 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival: MassArts

Jason showed me some of the new work by the students and I was very impressed to see they are now working in 4K resolution.

From Dream to Discovery is the latest fulldome production from MOS, which was screened at the APS conference back in February.  Jason showed me quite a number of their production tests, in particular the live action sequences which they captured with a 3d printed 10 camera GoPro rig.  I was impressed to see how well they seamlessly integrated the live action footage with their 3D animation.

The Charles Hayden Planetarium has a 57 foot dome with 209 seats in a concentric configuration.  Interestingly just across the hallway is an Omnimax dome, which is run by a completely separate department at MOS.   While the Omnimax focuses on natural history and earth sciences, they leave all the astronomy to the experts at the Planetarium.  It makes for a great synergy.

On my way to attend the IPS Council meeting in Montreal, I took the opportunity to visit the Hayden Planetarium in New York at the American Museum of Natural History.

The American Museum of Natural History is massive, one of the largest in the world.  It’s earliest buildings date  back to 1874, and it is very much a classic museum with many beautiful dioramas and galleries full of dinosaurs.

The Hayden Planetarium was originally built in 1935, but completely replaced by a new facility in 2000.  And it is icon of modern architecture.  An enormous sphere that appears to float inside a glass cube six stories high.

The planetarium shows are run highly efficiently, every half an hour.  The 21m dome seats over 400 people, and they can move them in an out very quickly.

They are currently running ‘Dark Universe’, which I had already seen. However I had never seen it in a planetarium with concentric seating. It was quite interesting to see how this version worked in the dome. The projection system has very good contrast and very good blacks, so images of galaxies and the night sky looked great. However, I did find the images lacked brightness and colour. Fortunately, I have heard they are about to undergo a major upgrade of their system.

One of the first shows I saw at a planetarium was AMNH’s ‘The Search for Life’ narrated by Harrison Ford. This show really inspired me and opened my eyes to how immersive this medium could be. Since that time I had always wanted to visit the Hayden Planetarium, and I am glad that I have finally had the opportunity. The American Museum of Natural History is a magnificent museum, and the Hayden Planetarium an architectural wonder. A definite highlight of any visit to New York.