Throughout the year we serve thousands of Pre-K through college students. The planetarium is open to the public three times a year for special presentations including the perennial favorite The Star of Bethlehem show in December. Original Fulldome Curriculum is being developed by Dr. David H. Bradstreet for Spitz, Inc., which will be used worldwide at other SciDome planetariums.

Most of our public offerings include a 25 minute presentation on the Sky Tonight. The remaining 25 minutes of the public shows feature an IMAX-like fulldome video.

The shows offered in the past have included Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity, The Zula Patrol: Under the Weather and Astronaut. Shows to be presented in the 2009-2010 season will include Stars and The Star of Bethlehem.

The Julia Fowler planetarium is a digital projector and computer called the SciDome which was purchased from Spitz, Inc. and uses a fisheye lens to project an assortment of celestial events on the dome. SciDome uses Starry Night as the main engine that creates the star field, and in conjunction with a program called ATM4 users will be able to automate planetarium shows.

The biggest difference in terms of education comes with the Starry Night star field engine. Now instead of having static two-dimensional star fields, we will be able to show you a three dimensional universe. Instead of looking at the planet Mars we now can fly there, land on the surface, and experience what life might be like on the red planet. If you rather we fly out of the solar system or even out of the Milky Way galaxy we can go on a space cruise and start to get a feel for how awesome the universe truly is.

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