The H.R. MacMillan Space Centre is one of the largest planetariums on the continent’s West Coast, inspiring millions of residents and tourists to Vancouver since it opened in the 1960s. Now, all of their planetarium presentations are powered by the OpenSpace open-source software project.
Last summer the Space Centre worked with local partners to refresh their legacy Sciss Uniview planetarium system. The Space Centre team reached out to Tau Immersive for help with bringing OpenSpace into the planetarium to power the team’s persentations, and provide the training so they could do more than ever before.
I began working with the HR MacMillan team in the fall of 2025 to support the installation of the software in their planetarium Star Theatre. Given their tight timeline to replace their aging projectors, all of this initial work was done fully remotely, with on-site staff acting as eyes and ears in the Star Theatre as I delivered configurations based on the specifications of the planetarium. This was accompanied by virtual training sessions to give their head interpreters the key piloting skills for the software, and diving in deep with their staff astronomer to take advantage of the visualization and storytelling capabilities of the software to design live shows.
In January of 2026 we arranged the opportunity to me to visit on-site. Coordinating with the Space Centre’s IT and Planetarium Technology teams we timed this visit for the installation of updated hardware to improve the performance of OpenSpace, giving me the time to do on-site optimization of the software.
Together, we built on the innovative choice of their system installer to build out an NDI-based pipeline for the planetarium to send the full-resolution of OpenSpace for the entire dome from a single, powerful server.
Meanwhile, the success of our training series was already showing, as the Space Centre’s staff astronomer, Dr. Rosanna Tilbrook, was bringing her knowledge and creativity OpenSpace. Each planetarium program was accompanied by a live introduction and astronomy presentation by staff interpreters. Rosanna had already added footage of recent aurora sightings to OpenSpace, letting staff share excitement from current astronomy events with their audiences.
I also had the delight of attending the Space Centre’s Dome evening programming block. Taking clear inspiration from the growing popularity of immersive experiences, the Dome is an excellent example that every planetarium already has the potential activate in this way to grow their audiences. The Dome is giving the Space Centre an opportunity to bring in new audiences for experimental programming, while still offering astronomy programming for audiences who can’t make it during the day. The event proves popular with tourists and locals alike (multiple people I talked to around town had recently gone to a program at the Dome).
As is often the case when I work with a planetarium in-person, they got to see the diversity of my skills. Many staff knew of my production skills from the wealth of Uniview community content I had shared over the years, and had just worked with me in software training. When a technical issue struck one of the Star Theatre’s projectors while I was on-site, I rolled up my sleeves with the Space Centre team to support the repair process with my experience and insights, and get the planetarium back online and in alignment for its audiences.
It’s been fantastic working with the H. R. MacMillan Space Centre and supporting their transition to OpenSpace and growth with the software. Planetariums of all sizes can benefit from the high-quality visualization OpenSpace provides. I’m always happy to share my expertise with the software with my colleagues so they can unlock the full potential of this tool to deliver the planetarium experiences of their dreams. My thanks to the Space Centre team for bringing me into this project, and I can’t wait to see what they achieve with OpenSpace.
If you’re interested in Tau Immersive’s OpenSpace Training Workshop, reach out to us below! We work with domes of all sizes, including portable planetariums. We also support OpenSpace in traditional theaters and immersive venues.
