This week we visited M. Josh Roberts and Astro Everywhere LLC to help configure OpenSpace with optimal settings for their portable planetarium. You don’t need a complex multi-computer rig to run OpenSpace, with a powerful laptop and the right configuration OpenSpace can easily be configured to run from a single machine with appropriate controls laid out for the operator, while the audience is immersed in the experience of the content.
One of my first planetarium experiences was in a portable dome when I was a grade school student. We were hastened into a darkened gym with the silver hemisphere of a StarLab portable in it. We crawled through the entrance tube and sat entranced as the operator toured us through the sky–limited in his tour by the handful of projection cylinders StarLab provided to slip over the lamp in the center of the dome.
Over a decade later, in 2006, as the digital planetarium era was beginning, I hosted a gathering of portable planetarium educators organized by Susan Button at the Chaffee Planetarium and we had an inspiring discussion about the potential for both fixed and portable domes to expand their capabilities as new technologies emerged on the market.
Now, high quality digital simulation software means that portable planetariums have access to the same high-quality data and simulation software as any famed larger planetarium. Portable operators are free to unleash their imagination without the constraints of the past generations of hardware, and can easily bring their own vision of the universe to audiences everywhere.
Tau Immersive is pleased to take our years of experience working in major museum planetariums to bring these same software tools to planetariums of all sizes.
