ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS

(for which no full paper was submitted)

* The Explorers*

Ken Miller- Bishop Museum
The Explorers is a new, interactive planetarium program developed by Bishop Museum in an education partnership with NASA. It tells the story of navigation in a new and different light, and then extends its exploration theme to humankind*s first steps on Mars. It is available at no charge to U.S. planetaria, and is accompanied by curricular materials, a website, satellite-broadcast educational television programming, and planetarian workshops.

ABSTRACT

News from the Frontier

Paul Tetu- Sky-Skan, Inc.
Sky-Skan continues to shape the brave new world of planetarium multimedia. Wether it is cutting edge technology like full-dome video, DVD, MPEG-2 and Hi-Def playback or new automation hardware that makes things easier and less expensive to control than ever, Sky-Skan brings tomorrow*s solutions to you today.

ABSTRACT

Putting the Planets in the Planetarium

Colleen Gino and Scott Teare
Mt. Wilson Observatory
Do you have a telescope used for public viewing at your facility? Then bring the excitement of real-time planetary and lunar images with your planetarium presentation using low cost, readily available video components. Typical objects easily viewed are Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars and the Moon. You can incorporate the next lunar eclipse or occultation into your presentation with ease!

ABSTRACT

What should textbooks say but don't?

Norman Sperling - Everything in the Universe
Astronomy textbooks copy one another and authors mostly try to cover the same things. While this is often satisfactory it always leaves instructors with important matters to fill in, and leaves students with important gaps in their understanding. Please tell what you think astronomy textbooks ought to say but don*t. These could be corrections to misconceptions the books leave out and could be including terms they routinely leave out.

ABSTRACT

Laura MisajetLM Images

Laura's latest all-skies from LM Images, including Hubble*s Hodge 301, Mt. Burnett Observatory, stained-glass windows, stonehedge, and some spectacular Apollo images. Custom all-skies can be created for your planetarium shows.

ABSTRACT

SPACE UPDATE: Being live and virtually live

Carolyn Sumners- Houston Museum of Natural Science
Discover this unique way to present the latest space images in the exhibit area around your planetarium. One CD-ROM (PC or MAC) provides six software pieces featuring the solar system, deep space, space weather, the sky tonight, and comet impacts. Each can be a stand-alone kiosk or combined into one kiosk called Space Update. Images are updated automatically over the Internet through an FTP server. The visitor selecting images never realize how the images are updated and never has to wait for an image to be downloaded in real time. the software can even be used to provide a second screen of high resolution updated images on the planetarium dome during live programs.

ABSTRACT

Last Night Planetarium:
Work in progress

Just ask Carolyn, Laurel or Tony!

Carolyn Summers, Laurel Ladwig, Tony Butterfield
  • Things you might not want to try that will actually work when you cram big new projectors into an old theater.
  • How to make you dome come along* to were you want it.
  • What it means when your Barco responds to music!
  • Rendering, Stitching, slicing and dicing: Our Semantic ShortComings
  • Rapid rendering-what you can really get away with!
  • The Power of Panning Panoramas or Instant Istanbul!
  • Can we shoot it live? Or Bouncing on the Bus!
  • Mighty morphs! Or Hold Onto Your Continents!
  • Organize the Species in Your Rack
  • Emergency Stars
  • Trails and Tribulations of 3D: What we*ve tried- from Light Wave to Bryce
  • From IMAX to the dome: a transformation that worked