Bishop Museum Watumull Planetarium closes May 10 – 25 to install new digital video system
Bishop Museum’s Watumull Planetarium will be closed from May 10 – 25, 2012 inclusive to install a full-dome video system, Digistar 4, in the existing facility. Digistar 4, designed by Evans & Sutherland (Salt Lake City, UT) will allow the planetarium to present programs that cover the dome in vivid moving images. This will be the first of two phases in the 2012 renovation of the planetarium.
The planetarium will reopen with the Digistar 4 system on Saturday May 26. For the summer, through September 3, the Watumull Planetarium will run the new full dome system within the existing planetarium. Programs will be offered daily except for Tuesdays (when the Museum is closed) from May 26 through September 3, inclusive.
Summer schedule for Watumull Planetarium, May 26 – September 3 2012
10:30am
New Horizons (23 minutes)
A full-dome tour of the planets as seen by recent NASA missions.
11:30 a.m.
Sky Tonight (25 minutes)
A tour of the night skies over Hawai‘i, enhanced will full dome video images.
1:30 p.m.
Explorers of Polynesia (40 min).
The museum’s classic show on Polynesian navigation.
3:30 pm:
Seven Wonders (33 minutes).
From the seven wonders of the ancient World (Great Pyramid, Lighthouse of Alexandria etc); through some modern wonders (Eiffel Tower) to seven wonders of the Universe (Mars to a black hole). Full dome show.
After Labor Day the planetarium will then be closed for three months, from September 4 through November 30, 2012, for the second phase of renovations. This second phase will include:
- Installation of a new, seamless interior dome in the theater
- Installation of a new Goto Chronos II star projector, projecting 8,500 pin-point stars on the new dome
- Reinstallation of Digistar 4 full dome video.
- Installation of hybrid control system that will allow the Chronos star projector and Digistar 4 video system to ‘talk’ to each other. We will be able to show pinpoint stars from the Chronos star machine, for example, and then project a Greek or Hawaiian picture of that constellation from the Digistar video system. Even as the sky turns, the constellation picture from the video system will stay locked on the Chronos star field.
- New seats, carpet, lights and sound system.
“Bishop Museum has discussed the renovation of our planetarium for over twenty years,” says Mike Shanahan, Director of Education and Planetarium. “Thanks to the support of the State of Hawai‘i, this dream of a state of the art planetarium for Bishop Museum will finally come true in 2012.”
About Bishop Museum
The Bishop Museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop in memory of his wife Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last direct descendant of King Kamehameha I. Today, the Museum is recognized as the principal museum of the Pacific, housing the world’s largest collection of Hawaiian and Pacific artifacts and natural history specimens. More than 340,000 people visit the Museum each year, including over 40,000 schoolchildren. For more information, please call 808.847.3511 or visit www.bishopmuseum.org.
