Innovation Special Planetariums 9 - Carl Zeiss Planetariums
Innovation Special Planetariums 9 - Carl Zeiss Planetariums
Innovation Special Planetariums 9 - Carl Zeiss Planetariums
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New Stars<br />
for Laupheim’s Milky Way<br />
Sebastian Ruchti<br />
Chairman, Public Observatory Laupheim e.V.<br />
The Planetarium of Laupheim is run by<br />
a registered society that also runs the<br />
local public observatory. After 22 years<br />
of successful operation and with a<br />
total attendance of 800,000-plus in 60<br />
self-produced shows, the planetarium<br />
equipment will be completely modernized<br />
in te summer of 2012.<br />
The existing equipment with the ZEISS<br />
M 1015 main projector had grown<br />
organically in the course of the years.<br />
Finally, apart from the star projector<br />
there were around 50 slide projectors<br />
and various video systems, among them<br />
one with 3D capability for presenting<br />
stereoscopic content, and a system able<br />
to fill slightly more than half the planetarium<br />
dome with video imagery.<br />
The forthcoming modernization will<br />
make the Laupheim star theater one of<br />
Europe’s most advanced medium-dome<br />
planetariums. It is intended that shows<br />
will continue to be created and presented<br />
by the members of the society.<br />
Therefore, in selecting the components<br />
of the new equipment, we were<br />
intent on getting again a star projector<br />
capable of delivering a realistic, brilliant<br />
night sky, which in the foreseeable<br />
future cannot be achieved with<br />
the projection methods of digital video<br />
technology. The star projector will be<br />
supplemented, however, by a digital<br />
fulldome projection system intended to<br />
replace all existing video and slide projectors.<br />
Its integration with the optomechanical<br />
projector will result in many<br />
new ways for the presenter to demonstrate<br />
and explain complex relationships<br />
and phenomena in the sky in a vivid<br />
and comprehensible manner. The new<br />
equipment will permit us to show, in an<br />
all-live mode, things which would, with<br />
the existing equipment, require several<br />
weeks of production and testing.<br />
The decisive factor in our opting for<br />
a combined ZEISS projection system<br />
consisting of SKYMASTER ZKP 4 and<br />
powerdome®VELVET was that <strong>Carl</strong><br />
<strong>Zeiss</strong> is presently the only supplier in<br />
the market offering an opto-mechanical<br />
star projector as well as a fulldome projection<br />
system whose projectors deliver<br />
a perfectly black background. Especially<br />
the attempts of the clever members<br />
of the observatory society to work out<br />
and install their projection systems of<br />
their own, using conventional projectors,<br />
have shown how important it is<br />
for such systems to harmonize with a<br />
star projector. We would not want that<br />
the audience’s illusion of viewing a<br />
realistic sky were spoiled at any time by<br />
gray frames and backgrounds.<br />
<strong>Innovation</strong> <strong>Special</strong> <strong>Planetariums</strong> 9, 2012<br />
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