New De Anza Planetarium - Bring your binoculars

The De Anza planetarium has finally returned from it's 3-year long renovation. The De Anza planetarium shows have been favorites by many since 1969, entertaining and educating many children and adults on the night sky. The MS-15 served it's purpose for all of the well, satisfying the astronomer in all of us. But the MS-15 was getting old, and more technical issues began arising at each show. The decision to renovate was brought about along with the decision to try the newer projector invented, called the Infinium S star projector. So after 3 years of renovation, the planetarium is finally ready for the public again. Given a private opportunity to "test drive" the equipment, both my brother Ben (see The Revival of the Minolta Planetarium) and I couldn't wait - and we weren't disappointed.

The Infinium projector is very different than the predecessor. Instead of two projection units on the ends of a connector, the Infinium has only one large projector in the center. The projector changed from looking like some sort of odd preying mantis to a spider head with multiple eyes. The seats are also not in a circular orientation in relation to the projector anymore, but instead facing a side of the planetarium. According to Karl von Ahnen, the technical director of the Minolta planetarium, this was because of complaints from school teachers on the previous orientation. Apparently the school teachers were annoyed they could not be in front of all of their students at one time. The control panel has also been moved all the way to the back of the chairs. The ceiling is also very different. Instead of the old ceiling, which generally gave the sense of being inside a giant volleyball, the ceiling is smooth and reflects the planetarium feeling a lot better. The sound system and the lighting systems that give aid to the main projector have become less visible so they do not take up as much space. Overall, the planetarium had gone many changes, some more pleasant than others.

My personal bane was the seating arrangements. Since all of the seats were facing one direction, most of the seats did not get as good a view as the seats in the far back. This becomes a problem if the seats are extremely filled up in a certain show, which happens many times at popular planetarium shows such as Magic Sky.

But the seating is not a key issue since the new projectors power is so amazing. because the new projector's power is something to be shared by all people that visit the planetarium. The Infinium can show even more stars then visible at Fremont Peak. One could even take out a pair of binoculars and observer clusters and galaxies. The color in the Lagoon nebulae was even visible, and that is something that is normally not visible on a normal night. Even more amazing was the new ability to see the night sky from other planets and other time frames in the world's history. This ability offers a new opportunity in the planetariums future shows, so they could incorporate more abilities and shows.