Lights, planets, action! The role of AV tools in planetariums
- Live team
- May 28
- 10 min read
From humble star projectors to global science-art stages, planetariums now invite people of all ages to explore space, climate and culture – employing interstellar digital storytelling and cutting-edge AV tools
Words Oliver Webb
For centuries, the idea of using a dome to show the night sky has fascinated mankind. In 1913, Oskar von Miller, founder and first general director of the Deutsches Museum, approached Zeiss concerning the manufacturing of a ‘rotating star sphere’. For the next ten years, engineers, astronomers and physicists all worked on building a device that could project fixed stars and planets into a dome. Miller envisioned a device for the museum that could show visitors movements of the fixed stars, planets, the sun and moon. In 1914, he came up with the groundbreaking idea of making this possible through projection.
The world’s first planetarium projector was developed and built by the Zeiss engineers Walther Bauersfeld and Rudolf Straubel between March 1919 and July 1923, with the world’s first projection planetarium beginning operation in the Deutsches Museum on 7 May 1925. The first Zeiss projector illuminated the dome in Munich with 4500 stars.
Planetariums were a phenomenal success among the general public, and over the course of the following years began to crop up across the globe. The Adler Planetarium opened in Chicago in 1930, as the first in the US, while the first in Asia opened in Osaka, Japan in 1937. The Melbourne Planetarium, Australia opened in 1965 and the refurbished Stardome Observatory in Auckland, New Zealand has been in operation since 1997. The London Planetarium, which opened in 1958, was the first in the UK. The current longest-running planetarium in the southern hemisphere, which has been operational since 1955, is located in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Their popularity sky-rocketed in the US during the sixties space race, with the Apollo 11 mission’s successful landing on the moon in 1969 reigniting public interest. The following year, the International Planetarium Society was established. After this, in 1973, the first planetarium laser music show premiered at the Griffith Observatory, marking a transformative shift towards alternative uses for these singular buildings.
In 1983, Digistar became the first digital planetarium projection system, which led to projection systems replacing traditional mechanical systems. Immersive 360° films have since revolutionised planetarium experiences, offering interactive and engaging content – and today, video projection is used in most planetariums.
Zeiss vs Zeiss
Tim Florian Horn is the founding president of the Stiftung Planetarium Berlin (SPB), as well as the director of Zeiss-Großplanetarium and Archenhold-Sternwarte (Archenhold Observatory).
The Archenhold-Sternwarte was first opened in 1896 as part of the World Fair, and later became the main focus for research on astronomy and history of astronomy. The first Zeiss-Planetarium, opened in 1926, was destroyed during and demolished after World War II, while the new Zeiss planetarium was built in West Berlin in 1965. But when Germany was divided, East Berlin built a second Planetarium because the company also split into two.
The Zeiss-Großplanetarium was one of the last major buildings built in the German Democratic Republic, in 1987, the 750th anniversary of Berlin. “Both of the Zeiss companies built star projectors, so they were competing against each other on the global market. Zeiss was ultimately competing against itself,” explains Horn.
On 1 July 2016, the Zeiss-Großplanetarium, Archenhold-Sternwarte, Planetarium am Insulaner and the neighbouring Wilhelm-Foerster-Sternwarte were transferred from the Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin to the newly established SPB. The four establishments were unified under the umbrella of the SPB. “That’s how the foundation came to be; it only took 25 years of discussions to finally unite the East Berlin and West Berlin planetariums and observatories,” says Horn.
“Our projectors are based on LEDs, but the light source is a tiny LED, rather than 800 or 1200 sq m of LEDs. I don’t think LEDs are quite there yet in terms of their longevity, cost and energy efficiency. It’s still more expensive to run a planetarium or venue with LED technology than with traditional projectors. Running a planetarium has to be cost effective, and the ticket revenue is quite small, so they need to be sustained by public funding.”
A hundred years ago, a planetarium was mostly star shows and constellations. “We’re currently transforming them from traditional star theatres into science theatres, hosting all kinds of events – from yoga under the stars to concerts with immersive visuals,” details Horn.
“Planetariums need to move beyond their niche of traditional star shows. We have to reinvent what they can be; slowly transforming to become more relevant. Hopefully, they won’t lose their core focus on space and space travel, but expand that focus on all sciences, connecting them and bringing it all together through the beauty of the universe and our relevance within it.”
Digital Domes
The UK’s number one space-based visitor attraction, with over 330,000 visitors a year, is the National Space Centre, situated in Space City, Leicester. NSC Creatives have on-site access to the Sir Patrick Moore Planetarium, the UK’s largest digital dome (18m) and a 3m Stereoscopic 3D test dome facility. The on-site hybrid CPU/GPU render farm, high-speed storage and networks ensure all projects can meet the heavy technical requirements of immersive media production.
Since its formation in 2000, the NSC has become a world leader in 360° digital planetarium fulldome production, with shows licensed to over 1000 venues across 70 countries in 25 languages. It uses emerging XR technologies to connect participants to narratives in innovative and exciting new ways, with XR experiences in some of the biggest international festivals, such as SXSW, Tribeca and Sundance.
The Space Centre is the parent company of NSC Creative. “Effectively, they get our fulldome shows, but the majority of our market – and where the revenue comes from – is global,” says Ben Squires, NSC creative producer. “We’ve been testing our shows on different projectors. The Sir Patrick Moore Planetarium has a rough resolution of about 5.5K at the moment, and that’s provided by 13 domestic BenQ projectors. That’s 13 projectors with blends covering the whole surface to bring our shows to life. They’re hoping to move to an 8K projection system, which will probably be laser-based, moving away from a more limited colour space into a much richer RGB colour space. The whole experience should be even more amazing once that’s in.”
Planetariums have largely been arenas to tell stories and relay information about what’s happening in space, but Squires believes this is changing and no longer solely the case. “Digital fulldome started around 1999; before that it was star balls and anode projectors,” adds Squires. “They’re moving away from a solely STEM-based model into ones that are embracing far more of the techniques and sheer thrill of entertainment-based media. It’s no longer limited to those kinds of stories; we now present shows about all sorts of subjects, including important topics and issues such as climate change. I think that’s one of the things which is changing most from a commercial and business point of view, a lot of planetariums are now moving into – or trying to explore more – commercial ventures like showing entertainment content, especially relating to music.”
Commencing countdown, engines on
The first planetarium to open on a university campus in the United States was the Morehead Planetarium at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Opening its doors for the first time in May 1949, it was the eighth planetarium to be built in the US and the first in the South. During the period after World War II, there were very few Zeiss projectors available due to the company having lost a number of factories in the war. John Motley Morehead III travelled to Sweden to purchase a Zeiss Model II, which would ultimately serve as the heart of the planetarium.
A few years after its opening, the Morehead Planetarium became the home of astronaut training and, between 1959 and 1975, just about every astronaut who participated in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz programmes trained at Morehead. In 2011, the planetarium switched out its Zeiss Mark VI star projector (that had replaced the Model II in 1969) for a new fulldome digital projection system and released its first original fulldome planetarium show Earth, Moon and Sun. The show is designed mainly for primary school students, and is a favourite with teachers seeking to bring their kids on school trips to Morehead.
Fulldome theatre manager Richard McColman has worked at Morehead Planetarium since April 1992 and boasts four decades of experience in the field. “In this role, I oversee all aspects of what happens in the domed theatre of the planetarium,” he begins. “This includes spearheading the process of selecting pre-produced content that audiences experience in the theatre, setting the standards for live presentations, presenting some shows myself, training theatre staff – including undergraduate university student staffers – interfacing with visitors and managing the theatre’s technical operations. I also interface with our production team on shows they create for our dome.”
Morehead currently has two Sony VPL-GTZ380 projectors, each one opposing the other in the theatre system. “Each of the two projectors covers roughly one half of the dome, and each is 4x2K resolution, together making a unified 4x4K dome image,” says McColman. “Using software-based masking as well as physical masking, the two images are blended together around the intersections of the two projector images, to effectively create a single, seamless dome image.
“We chose these projectors due to their high brightness, high contrast and dense colour saturation specifications. All these issues are important when spreading images from just two projectors across a 20.7m-diameter dome, as we are doing at Morehead. Of course, the projection lenses – in this case, lenses that cover very wide areas of the dome – are equally as important as the projectors themselves in displaying high-quality images. Each of the two Sony projectors in our dome is mated to a Navitar Hemistar fisheye lens.
“The Sony projectors and their mated lenses, as well as the rest of our system, were installed and configured by SSIA Technologies, which is based in Nashua, New Hampshire in the US. The fulldome planetarium software that drives the system is from a partnership between SSIA Technologies and Sky-Skan International GmbH.”
Ben Fox has been digital production manager at Morehead for the last ten years, and has overseen some of the planetarium’s shows and multiple 360° videos and VR interactives. “The majority of our projects deploy the same core software tools that would be used in standard CG film production,” he adds. “Maya, Houdini, Nuke and Resolve are our primary tools, with V-Ray as our main render engine. Each has ways to empower our content creation needs, since the big adjustment we need to make is that final frames need to be warped for planetarium projection.
“Technically, we work on the top half of the full 360° sphere, but adjust how much of the full view we use depending on content. This can entail rendering 3D scenes with fisheye or equirectangular lenses or using VR tools in Nuke and Resolve to composite elements together. Unlike traditional film production, where you can easily add text or 2D elements to a shot, every single element or effect needs to be processed or distorted to look correct on a planetarium dome.”
The team have also created a replica of Morehead Planetarium in Unreal Engine. “We use a VR headset to accurately review our shows, right at our workstations,” describes Fox. “This is an essential optimisation, since the proper placement of content on the dome needs to be just right to ensure the audience’s comfort and engagement. Shifting content one or two degrees can really make a difference, and being able to easily preview these adjustments in a virtual replica streamlines this process.”
High-contrast cosmos
Larry Paul serves as executive director of technology and custom solutions at Christie. The company’s projectors are deployed in planetariums all over the world, including the Planetarium of Bogotá, the Infinity Dome at the TELUS Spark Science Centre and Urânia.
Urânia, a pioneering Brazilian company in educational technology, is transforming the way students across the country learn about astronomythrough its innovative project, O planetário móvel vai às escolas (The planetarium goes to schools). “This ambitious initiative brings immersive, 360° educational films directly to schools in different Brazilian states using mobile domes equipped with Christie Inspire Series 1DLP laser projectors,” says Paul.
The 13 mobile inflatable domes, which measure 7m in diameter and 3.8m in height, are travelling Brazil in dedicated trucks, visiting different schools across the country. The goal is to foster the school community’s interest in astronomy and related sciences.
“Each portable planetarium is equipped with a single 8500-lumen 4K UHD Christie 4K860-iS projector and provides a fully immersive visual experience for up to 60 students seated on tatamis on the floor,” explains Paul. “With multiple sessions throughout the day, each dome has the capacity to serve up to 600 students daily. The domes’ synthetic fabric construction, tailored specifically for Urânia, allows for quick and easy set-up, with the entire structure inflating in minutes.”
The Infinity Dome is an accessible three-story dome theatre that transports guests into outer space and shows the latest large-screen films. It includes eight Christie Griffyn 4K projectors, along with RSA Cosmos – Konica Minolta’s state-of-the-art planetarium software Sky Explorer. The Planetarium of Bogotá uses two Christie Griffyn Series pure laser projectors controlled by Christie Pandoras Box Software and Christie Mystique camera-based alignment and calibration software.
“The planetarium’s projectors are edge-blended, one covering the dome’s north hemisphere and the other the south. However, each one projects over approximately 70% of the dome to ensure more-than-sufficient overlap for blending and warping. The projectors are also outfitted with special Navitar lenses for curved surfaces, which ensures a homogeneous focus of 90%.”
Christie’s flagship offering is its Eclipse projectors, which offer high performance for planetariums, including the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium and other special venues, as they can reproduce true HDR imagery with a contrast ratio up to 20,000,000:1. “It combines true HDR performance with an expansive colour gamut, approaching full Rec. 2020 and 2100 colour spaces and built-in 120Hz capabilities,” adds Paul.
“Other offerings include the M 4K RGB Series, from 15,750 to 25,300 lumens, and the Griffyn Series of RGB pure laser-illuminated projectors with brightness up to 50,000 lumens. Both projector series have UHC lens options that provide contrast performance of up to 7000:1 sequential contrast, and optional high-frame-rate capabilities up to 480Hz for crisp graphics and realism.
We also introduced the Sapphire 4K40-RGBH, the world’s first high-brightness hybrid RGB pure laser and laser phosphor projector, designed for 2D and 3D projects. It features exclusive optional active or Infitec options for a richer 3D experience when needed.”
While LED displays in planetariums have certainly made headlines over the past few years with some impressive capabilities, the trend is towards high-contrast projection solutions. “These solutions are far more cost-effective for large displays than LEDs, and designed to deliver consistent and reliable 6K or higher-resolution solutions for over ten years of operation – all with stunning colour and contrast,” notes Paul.
“Each planetarium requires a custom solution – no two venues are the same. By working with an experienced and trusted integrator and manufacturer, planetariums can find the solution that’s best for them, ensuring a memorable trip through the cosmos for their guests.”
An intergalactic future
Today, there are currently more than 4000 planetarium installations across almost every country in the world – 700 of which have been equipped with Zeiss tech. As planetariums continue to evolve and utilise new tech, organisations are unanimous in their outlooks for the future. Creating new and engaging content to maintain public interest and going beyond the realms of space travel is key in planetariums’ survival. Tackling other critical issues and serving as music or cinema venues are just some ways to achieve this. But, with Artemis missions to Mars on the horizon and commercial space travel firmly on the up (we won’t mention Katy Perry), public interest in space travel is sure to continue.
This feature was first published in the May/Jun 2025 issue of LIVE.
