Astro-Tec is working on the world’s largest planetarium dome, at the Nagoya City Science Museum in Japan
Rocket Science If the planetarium will be in a new building, another consideration is whether to create an iconic piece of architecture. “The theatre could be in a square box, or another dome, or a cylinder, or an iconic shape,” Wright says. “The choice of enclo- sure can play a big part in theming the building or conveying an idea to customers. It can refl ect what’s on the inside, or hide what’s on the inside.” Among Wright’s favourite designs is
the Glasgow Science Centre planetarium, which was completed in 2000 and features a 58ft (18m) outer dome enclosure shaped like a truncated sphere, with a 50ft projec- tion screen dome inside. Another is the dome theatre created for the Volkswagon Autostadt attraction in Germany. Opened in 1999, the 120-seat theatre was built inside
AM 3 2010 ©cybertrek 2010
a full 18m (59ft) diameter sphere, housed inside a glass cube. Spitz acted as a consultant on both
projects. “In Glasgow, the client had designed support for the dome before we came in, so we had to adapt the mount- ing of the dome to fi t with their structures,” Wright says. With Autostadt, the client wanted a completely smooth look for the outer sphere, without showing any equip- ment or door handles. “They wanted it to look like a pearl fl oating,” Wright says, so invisible magnetically-activated latches were developed to allow service staff to access equipment. When it comes to projection domes
themselves, quality has improved over the years. Domes are constructed from panels; originally, these were bolted together in a way that caused noticeable seams. New
techniques beginning in the late 1960s minimized these by overlapping plates, and these ‘lap seam’ domes are still widely used in the industry. However, machining techniques for cutting these plates have become precise to within 1/1000 of an inch, allowing plates to butt up against each other with no need for overlapping – Spitz has used this technology to develop its NanoSeam dome, which was intro- duced in 2006. “There are no overlaps or folds anywhere,” Huggins says. The NanoSeam, which costs about 20 per cent more than a lap seam dome and was installed recently at the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences, still makes up only around 20 per cent of the domes Spitz sells. But it’s an investment that can make a difference in image quality, especially since today’s
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