Re: Cinema as Planetarium

rehanjamshed@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Is it practically possible in "anyway" to use a standard cinema scope
projection system as a Planetarium?
Or is there any way to get a little touch of "planetarium feeling"
through a cine-scope projection system?

Laptop projectors are commonly used at astronomy club meetings to
display presentations. In my area, they are occassionally used for the
type of display that you are referring to. The following are some
freeware options may be useful for generating the type of presentation
that you are considering. Some, like Partview (know called the
"Digital Universe") are not simple to run. Except the JPL simulator,
these are all true 3-D software packages:

===========
Celestia - Solar Systema and near space in 3-D
===========
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/ (alternate source)
http://www.shatters.net/forum/ (Celestia forum)

===========
NASA JPL Solar System Simulator
===========
(online, not portable - but good for generating custom Sol planetary
images, including most of the moons around solar system planets.)
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/

===========
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Galaxy Explorer: Known galaxies in 3-D
===========
This tool enables an interactive, video game-like fly through of the 3D
galaxy distribution in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This tool runs
under Windows, requires DirectX8.0 or higher, and a graphics card
supporting 3D.
http://cas.sdss.org/dr3/en/help/download/gex2/default.asp

===========
Hayden Planetarium's Digital Universe Partview: The Milky Way in 3-D
===========
(with a separate Extra-galactic database, Galaxies in 3-D)
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/hp/vo/du/index.html
(Partview is difficult to learn and run, but comprehensive and
technically accurate)

As to astro movie making you might want to look at a couple of DVDs
available through Amazon.com called "Stargazer" and "Stargazer II".
These are built around publically available Hubble Space Telescope
images and may give you some technique ideas. These "movies" are built
around NASA still shots - with the camera panning across the still shot
to make animate it.

Do not discount the potential to use pubically available NASA space
telescope images - many of which are simply amazing. A smattering of
sites includes:

NASA. 2005. The Hubble Space Telescope: Astronomy Images
(Website)http://hubble.nasa.gov/multimedia/astronomy.php

Space Telescope Sci. Institute. 2005. Hubblesite. (Website - NASA
outreach contractor)
http://hubblesite.org/

NASA-GSFC, Univ. of Michigan. 2005. Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)
Archive Index. (Website)
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/aptree.html

NASA. 2005. CGRO Archive Site.
http://cossc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/cgro/index.html

Harvard-Smithsonian. 2005. Chandra X-Ray Observatory Site.
http://chandra.harvard.edu/

NASA. 2005. IRAS Homepage.
http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/IRASdocs/iras.html

NASA IPAC. 2005. IRAS Image Gallery.
http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/Outreach/Gallery/IRAS/irasgallery.html

Bennett, C.L. et al. 2003. First Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy
Probe (WMAP) Observations: Preliminary Maps and Basic Results.
Astrophys.J.Suppl. 148 (2003) 1
http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/dr1/pub_papers/firstyear/basic/wmap_basic_results.pdf

Caltech. 2005. Spitzer Infra-red Space Telescope Homepage.
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer/

NASA-ESA. 2005. SOHO Website.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/

NASA. 2005. TRACE Hompage.
http://trace.lmsal.com/

and also a couple of the modern great all-sky surveys:

Caltech. 2005. 2Mass Sky Survey
Homepage.http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/overview/about2mass.html

SDSS. 2005. Sloan Digital Sky Survey Homepage.
http://www.sdss.org/

My own personal favorites are all-sky Milkway pictures, like ones from
2MASS:

http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/gallery/2mass_allskyatlas.jpg

and IRAS:

http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/Outreach/Gallery/IRAS/allsky.html

and Alex Mellinger's classic visual-spectrum all-sky:

http://canopus.physik.uni-potsdam.de/~axm/mwpan_vr.html

- Canopus56

(P.S. The Trace movie images of the Sun will really blow your
socks-off. They are like flying over the surface of the Sun in a
futuristic 25th century shuttle.)

.

Relevant Pages