I'm at the heart of a dying star
or potentially on a desert planet
with two suns and a whole lot of destiny.
Physically, of course, I'm in a manufacturing warehouse
on the campus of the University of Utah.
But if you put this all together in just the right way,
and put some really smart technology in the mix,
then you get something like this.
This is DomeX,
the most advanced planetarium that we've ever created.
With it, you can almost touch the rings of Saturn
as they slowly accumulate around the moon, Pan,
turning it more and more into a pancake.
Today, we'll be finding out the history of planetariums
and learning just how does a planetarium work?
Humankind has always been fascinated
with the night sky,
painting what we saw in our caves and tombs.
However, it wasn't until 1299, with the Fifth Crusade,
that we see what would be recognizable as a planetarium.
Among other curiosities brought back from the east,
Emperor Frederick II acquired and then subsequently lost
a rather curious tent.
Along the domed canvas was hundreds of tiny holes
reflecting the constellations above.
On a bright sunny day,
people would be able to sit inside,
and a clockwork mechanism would make the canvas
move around them,
as if the stars above were truly moving.
The next great leap in planetarium technology
came in 1923, with the Zeiss projector,
descendants of which are still being installed
in science museums all around the world.
Boston's own Charles Hayden Planetarium uses this one,
the Zeiss Starmaster skyball.
At its core is an exceptionally bright light bulb,
which shines through a number of lenses
scattered across the outside of the dome.
Obviously, the folks who run this planetarium
weren't going to let me pop
one of these lenses out to show you,
but with a help of German YouTuber and engineer
Romke Schievink,
I found something even better.
This is the world's very first planetarium projector.
At nearly a hundred years old,
it is a marvel of 20th century mechanical engineering.
Nowadays, I don't think people would even attempt
to build it.
In fact, back then, no one wanted to,
and it was only after a fair amount of arm-twisting
by its inventor, Walther Bauersfeld,
and the director of the Deutsches Museum, Oskar von Miller,
which the Zeiss Company was eventually convinced
to manufacture it.
The back of each lens contains a thin copper film.
Light passes through these carefully positioned holes
to be projected onto the dome as stars.
This large, cylindrical section contains
rings of interlocking gears
carefully made to track the positions
of the sun, our moon, or a planet
and then project these onto the dome.
After years of restoration,
today, the Mark 1 projector is back,
wowing audiences at its new home in Bruchhausen-Vilsen.
in 1962, Mariner became the first spacecraft
to visit another planet.
In 1977, we sent the Voyager probes
to the edge of the solar system.
Now, the universe wasn't just some static wallpaper
of the night sky,
but rather a real, 3D place which we could traverse.
This deep appreciation of the universe
demanded a whole new type of planetarium.
Rather than having the audience passively sit
as the stars move around them,
instead, they feel to take off, like in a starship,
and fly through the galaxy.
Of course, such a maneuver would be impossible
using traditional opto-mechanical systems.
They would need to rely on computer graphics,
which is, of course, where our story returns
to the University of Utah.
Throughout the 1960s and seventies,
the University of Utah was the place for computer graphics.
Students from here went on to build Adobe, Pixar,
and the infamous "Utah Teapot."
In addition to their research work,
professors Evans and Sutherland
created a computer graphics company of the same name.
One of their major products was flight simulators,
and they were so good at it that,
in 1977, NASA commissioned a rather special tool.
You see, at the time, NASA had a rather optimistic view
of exactly how much budget Congress was going to give them
and were in the stages of planning a mission
from Earth to Saturn.
They wanted to be able to train the astronauts
in celestial navigation,
where they could see how nearer stars shifted
more than those that were further away
and therefore, work out exactly where they were
in the solar system.
Unfortunately, even though this is a pretty epic journey,
it's not quite long enough to see
any notable shifts in stars,
so it was ultimately abandoned.
Evans and Sutherland still wanted to pursue
the product, however,
but they would need a new sponsor,
one that didn't just want to explore the solar system,
but the entire galaxy.
While this star simulator discussion was going on,
a subdivision of ENS was busy at work
creating the graphical reader displays
for the movie "Star Trek: Wrath of Kahn."
They might not look like much compared to modern effects,
but, at the time, these were truly groundbreaking.
Despite being told not to include
any corporate logos or brand names.
If you reverse the USS Reliance identifier,
the text reads "Evans,"
after the company Evans and Sutherland.
Meanwhile, if you flip the Enterprise's own identifier,
we get "Neil,"
which is the name of one of the animators
working on the shot.
No science fiction epic would be complete
without a few sweeping shots of space.
Often, this was done by physically painting in
the background.
Hearing of simulator side project,
visual effects supervisor for the film, Jim Veilleux,
challenged ENS to make a fly-through of a real star field.
They pulled it off,
and it turns out they did it so well that it became
the opening credits for the entire film.
These aren't just random dots we're flying through.
These are scientifically accurate,
correctly positioned stars within our own Milky Way.
Audiences loved these effects,
so the next obvious step from the big screen
was to take it to the planetarium dome.
This is the Digistar II,
our first true digital planetarium.
If we open it up,
you can see that it's made of three distinct parts.
And the bottom, we have the computer processor.
Slightly above is the cathode ray tube.
And at the very top, we have a massive fisheye lens.
What's exciting about this planetarium
is that, because everything is run by a computer,
the presentation can be adapted on the go.
An operator would fly their virtual view port
through time and space,
and the computer would go to its database
for what objects might be visible.
This view port would then be drawn onto the dome
using the cathode ray tube and vector graphics.
The control panel contains a keyboard,
six degrees of freedom joystick,
and, in order to zoom through the universe,
a large button, helpfully labeled "Boldly go."
If you've been to a planetarium any time
in the last two decades,
then chances are it didn't use vector graphics
or fancy starballs,
but instead looked a bit more like this,
using digital projectors.
Let me show you something really cool.
Can we turn on projector one?
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
As you can see,
the dome is actually being covered
by five separate projectors,
which each have a corresponding field of view.
When setting up a planetarium for the first time,
the operator needs to carefully align
each of these projections,
so that they blend together seamlessly.
The image is made by passing different colored light
through a grid-like array of cells,
which open or close to let this light through.
The colors are then re-combined and transmitted outward.
This is known as raster graphics.
While it allows for a nearly infinite number of scenes,
there is a limit as to how many cells, and thus pixels,
we can have on an individual projector,
meaning we need a team
in order to cover the dome in any sort of resolution.
Despite these drawbacks and the extra effort we have to go,
I think the results are well worth it,
allowing us to display photographs taken in outer space
and to show complex, 3D renderings
of real, astronomical bodies.
So that's the projector.
What about the dome?
If you get up close,
you can see that the screen is a light gray color
and perforated with millions of tiny holes.
Light projected onto the screen
bounces off to be reflected into the audience.
That is how we see.
Since the dome is curved,
some of the light that bounces from the screen
will then instead go to another part of the screen
before finally being reflected into your eye.
That leads to weird bright splotches
where there should be none
and making the black void of space more like gray.
This effect is known at as cross-scatter.
No one had really noticed it
with old school, star-based planetariums
since there wasn't all that much light to reflect.
But once we could display extra large photographs,
then the whole thing becomes rather distracting.
The mix of color and texture used for the dome's surface
is designed to balance reflectivity for optimal viewing.
All those perforated holes that we noticed earlier
play two very important roles.
Firstly, they allow sound to pass through,
being produced by these massive speakers
which surround the audience.
The holes are carefully sized,
so that they're large enough to allow
the sound to pass through unimpeded,
but not too large so as to interfere
with the visual experience of being inside the dome.
The holes also have another benefit:
allowing cool air to pass through,
making sure the audience doesn't get too hot.
So those were the planetariums of the past and present,
but what about the future?
Nowadays, we don't just expect
to see photographs of planets.
Some of us might get to visit them for real.
How can a planetarium prepare you for that?
This is the DomeX, or a prototype of one anyway.
If you're going to be using this with an actual planetarium,
then you'd probably want to put the screen
all the way up there.
Fortunately though, being down here on ground level
allows us to take a closer look at how it works.
If we pop out one of the panels,
you can see that it's actually an array of tiny LED lights.
These are about 40 times brighter
than you can get with a regular projector.
On top of that, behind the LEDs,
the panels are painted matte black,
which significantly cuts back on cross reflection.
Together, this results in a much higher contrast
and more visually stunning experience.
In fact, shows like "The Mandalorian"
are using similar LED domes to film scenes on other planets
without needing to resort to green screen.
In a way, it's like we've come full circle.
From pinpricks of light on a canvas tent
to a starball, two types of projector,
and now back to dots of light on the wall,
planetariums have grown as both
a reflection of our technology
as well as our understanding of the cosmos.
Every human throughout history has looked up to the stars,
or, at least, we did
until cities and their light pollution grew
so as to obscure even the brightest
of these celestial bodies.
As the next generation of planetariums come online,
will these be enough to substitute
for the skies that we once lost
or, perhaps, will they remind us
to save a few places of true night?
Only time will tell.
This has been James Dingley from the Atomic Frontier.
While we still can, Keep Looking Up.