In the growing hush of full darkness, more than 9,000 stars appear, with so many gradations of intensity that binoculars can reveal more detail than the naked eye. That is the sensation offered by the newly renovated Charles Hayden Planetarium, which opened on 13 February 11 at the Museum of Science here, after a $9 million yearlong reconstruction, its new equipment, software and 57-foot dome promising to take the next generation to the stars.
The dome of the Hayden Planetarium with a digital projection.
It is easy to lose one’s balance in the vastness of space, and over the last 15 years as planetariums around the country have revamped their systems and shows to take advantage of the latest in digital technology and the most refined fiber-optic projectors from Zeiss (the same company that outfitted the first modern planetarium in Germany in 1923), many times the moorings have come loose. The domes have been used to stage fantastical free-for-all shows of cinematic effects, including dinosaurs, cartoonish tubes of warped space and sub-woofer grumblings.
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