This article was originally published in The conversation. The publication contributed the article on the space.com’s Expert Sounds: Op-ed & Insights.
Think of it: A small audience is quietly inserted into a dark room. They were amazed, as a good night sky shone above. They wonder – as much as they do – what trick makes the roof over their heads?
But it’s a show; The stars above are an experienced projection. The first time a public audience experienced the scene of mechanical opto-mechanical Planetaum. Location is New Opened Deutsches Museum in Munichconstructed to celebrate science and technology. The date on May 7 1925.
Look at the sky
All over time, cultures around the world use the stars to help understand the world, to understand where we come from and find out our place in the cosmos.
People try to relreat the actions of stars and planets since ancient times. In the 1700s, Orry, a clock model in SOLL Systemdeveloped. The word “Planetarium” was invented to describe the orders showing the planets.
An example of orry in the room was built by self-appointed astronomer in Fristan Crisian Eise Eyya. It’s still going on the Franyer, Netherlands.
No man went to the edge of the solar system to see this view. Orders, and other mechanical models in the universe are like Gloors of CelestialShow views from impossible, external sight.
The first planetaum
The desire for a realistic view of the stars and planets, made from a perspective we see, accumulated step in the early 20th century as Light pollution From growing cities decreases the view of the night sky.
People like Oskar von Miller, First Director of Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, want to return this vision of stars and planets to everyone. (With sadness, Von Miller’s first career as an electric engineer, surrounding the city light contributed to light pollution.)
An early attempt to make this view of the night sky is Atwood spaceinstalled in Chicago in 1913.
Approximately five meters altogether, it is made of sheet metal made by a Star map. When viewed from the inside, the light shines in 692 pinholes sorting Chicago Night Sky. The entire structure can still be corrupted to simulate the action of the stars.
A realistic manifestation of stars is something. The representation of the planets, whose sky positions changed from night to night, different from the other. Von Miller and others in Deutsches Museum know that fixed holes cannot complete the complexity of a moving planet.
What if the planets are shown through projection? If so, can’t the stars come here as well? With this realization, a new type of planetaum is born, borrowed name from the first Orchers But working in a perfectly different way.
The task of building such a device is given to the German optical company Carl Zeriss AG. After many failures, their first projector of Planetarium completed in 1923, with the first performance of Deutsches Museum a century ago.
Planetariums are a public hit. For decades, they spread throughout the world – the first planetarium of the United States opened in Chicago in 1930while the first of Asia opens the Osaka, Japan in 1937. Popularity of Planetariums is mainly accelerated by the US in the race space in the 1960s.
The oldest operating planetarium in Australia is Melbourne Planetarium, managed by museums Victoria since 1997. The current prime planetarium in Southern Hemisphere is In Montevideo, UruguayOperational since 1955.
Changing the technology step
The projector of Opto-mechanical Planetarium Projector remains a technological wonder in the modern world. Individual plates, perforated with pinholes, enlightened in a bright central light. Fifty lens focuses on each projection from one of the star maps to fill the entire dome with 5,000 stars.
the day,, month And the planets have separate projectors driven by gears and rods that have taken the calculation of the heaven’s position at any time or place.
The projector of Opto-mechanical Planetarium Projector remains a technological wonder in the modern world. Individual plates, perforated with pinholes, enlightened in a bright central light. Fifty lens focuses on each projection from one of the star maps to fill the entire dome with 5,000 stars.
The sun, moon and planets have separate projectors driven by gears and rods that have emerged in the sky’s skin position at any time or place.
In the 1990s, a digital revolution began. With the arrival of computers, the positions of the planets can be calculated digitally. Melbourne Planetarium became the first digital planetum in the southern hemisphere at the installation of Digistrado II in 1999.
This system, developed by computer graphics company and Sutherland, replaced many lenses in first projects with a fisheye lens. A beam of light flowing across the dome that makes it rapidly make an image – even with a star of green blobs.
Trade-off for a less than Crisp Starfield is 3D database with over 9,000 stars. For the first time, the plotetarium audience will fly in space, more than the edge of the solar system.
Planetarium technology continues to develop. Today, most planetariums act through video projection. Known completely, output from multiple projects is mixed to make a seamless video, which changes the planetaum in a sophisticated 360-degree theater.
A gate of stars
Astronomy also changed in the last century. Just as Zesiss completed its first projector, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered with other galaxies in front of our Milky Way Galaxy.
The stars shown in the Dome of Munich in 1925 only turned a small part of the universe we know today.
Planetariums digital systems now include data from telescopes and space agencies around the world. The audience can fly to the ground, orbit the planets and the moons of the solar system, and check the billions known as galaxies.
However some things have not changed. from Orchers and Lantern slides Of mechanical and digital planetarium, astronomical communication is often more than the most recent results of science.
The power of the planet in the past 100 years the ability to stimulate surprise and apprehension. It taped our lasting excitement in the deep mystery in the night sky.
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