Coming to a Dome Theater Near You

Fully immersive dome theaters—planetariums—are great venues for entertainment and education. But because of the complex technology such theaters employ, there are only about 40 planetariums nationwide. That makes access a problem for many people.

A past grant from NASA enabled Rice researchers to work in conjunction with the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS) to create the first full-dome multimedia planetarium programs and the first immersive theater in the United States, the Burke Baker Planetarium. Unlike wide-screen theater systems, such as Cinerama, that are designed to project film images into a viewer’s peripheral vision, full-dome programs combine traditional planetarium star field projections with digital animation sequences that fully immerse viewers in action on all areas of a domed screen.

Dubbed “Globe Theater,” the original full-dome technology uses six projectors to simultaneously display interlaced frames on the planetarium dome. “Our planetarium shows are truly immersive because they present images in front, behind, above, and on both sides of viewers’ seats,” says Patricia Reiff, professor of physics and astronomy and director of the Rice Space Institute. “The public loved our early productions—Powers of Time, Force 5, and Night of the Titanic. They are great vehicles to teach earth and space science. Unfortunately, full-sized planetariums require six projectors, working in concert with six different computers.”

Reiff is the principal investigator on Immersive Earth, a NASA-funded partnership designed to simplify the technology needed to project full-dome images. The five-year, $3.1 million project brings together museums, universities, and entertainment companies to create fully immersive planetarium programs that can be shown across the country inside inflatable, classroom-sized domes.

The key to Immersive Earth is replacing six separate projectors with a small, portable system that employs a single fish-eye projector to display immersive images on the inside of the inflatable dome. Creating the system is a formidable challenge, but Reiff says a prototype has been developed and tested.

The Immersive Earth grant also will pay for the creation of three new programs: Earth’s Wild Ride, which already is in production, Earth in the Balance, and Earth in Peril. Carolyn Sumners, the project’s co-director and director of astronomy and youth education at HMNS as well as an adjunct professor of physics and astronomy at Rice, has led in the development of content for the new portable system. Her research indicates that students are more engaged and more likely to master complex concepts after an interactive program using full-dome projections—whether at a museum’s planetarium or in a portable dome. Tony Butterfield, the museum’s lead animator, is coordinating visual design.

Other participants in the program include both the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh; the LodeStar Planetarium in Albuquerque; the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland; the Louisiana Arts and Science Center in Baton Rouge; the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.; Sky-Skan Inc.; Homerun Pictures Inc.; and iMove Inc.

—Jade Boyd