Ott Planetarium
Encyclopedia
Planetarium
A planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation...
at Weber State University
Weber State University
Weber State University is a public university located in the city of Ogden in Weber County, Utah, USA. It was founded in 1889 and is a coeducational, publicly supported university offering professional, liberal arts and technical certificates, as well as associate, bachelor's and master's degrees...
in Ogden, Utah
Ogden, Utah
Ogden is a city in Weber County, Utah, United States. Ogden serves as the county seat of Weber County. The population was 82,825 according to the 2010 Census. The city served as a major railway hub through much of its history, and still handles a great deal of freight rail traffic which makes it a...
, USA. The facility is named for Layton P. Ott and the Ott family. The planetarium is operated by university students and is a place of learning for audiences and staff alike.
The Facility
The Ott Planetarium star theaterTheatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
seats 60 persons under a 9.1 meter (30 foot) diameter perforated aluminum dome
Dome
A dome is a structural element of architecture that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere. Dome structures made of various materials have a long architectural lineage extending into prehistory....
. Images and video are projected onto the dome with a single projector located in the center of the room. The star theater is equipped with 5.1 channel surround sound
Surround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
.
In December 2004 the Ott Planetarium upgraded its main projection system from a 1969 Spitz A4 to a Konica Minolta Mediaglobe fulldome video system. The Mediaglobe upgrade replaced the star projector and over 30 slide and special effects projectors. Shortly after the Mediaglobe upgrade, planetarium staff began producing original content in the new digital format.
In 2006 the planetarium received a $1 Million U.S. Congressional Earmark
Earmark (politics)
In United States politics, an earmark is a legislative provision that directs approved funds to be spent on specific projects, or that directs specific exemptions from taxes or mandated fees...
to fund the development of educational programs. Part of this grant was used to purchase a 128 CPU render cluster and workstations for star show production.
Star Shows
The Ott Planetarium offers star shows to the public through its public events program. The planetarium is a popular field tripField trip
A field trip or excursion, known as school trip in the UK and school tour in Ireland, is a journey by a group of people to a place away from their normal environment...
destination - the star theater can be reserved for classes, groups, family outings, Boy Scout
Boy Scout
A Scout is a boy or a girl, usually 11 to 18 years of age, participating in the worldwide Scouting movement. Because of the large age and development span, many Scouting associations have split this age group into a junior and a senior section...
s and Girl Scout
Girl Scouts of the USA
The Girl Scouts of the United States of America is a youth organization for girls in the United States and American girls living abroad. It describes itself as "the world's preeminent organization dedicated solely to girls". It was founded by Juliette Gordon Low in 1912 and was organized after Low...
s. The Ott Planetarium serves over 20,000 people per year through field trips, public nights, and other public programs.
Original Productions
The Ott Planetarium produces original fulldomeFulldome
Fulldome refers to immersive dome-based video projection environments. The dome, horizontal or tilted, is filled with real-time or pre-rendered computer animations, live capture images, or composited environments....
content with a stated commitment to scientific accuracy and educational effectiveness.
Astro Otters and Astro Otters Jr. are module-based astronomy education programs. The population and sequence of these modules can be altered to meet the astronomy curriculum requirements of states or provinces. The Astro Otters program modules were produced with Blender 3D.
Cosmic Journey features images from NASA's Great Observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope
Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4 meter aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared...
and the Spitzer Space Telescope
Spitzer Space Telescope
The Spitzer Space Telescope , formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility is an infrared space observatory launched in 2003...
. The show is narrated by astrophysicist, Dr. Stacy Palen. Cosmic Journey was produced with Blender 3D and uses a 3D adaptation of the Ken Burns Effect
Ken Burns Effect
The Ken Burns effect is a popular name for a type of panning and zooming effect used in video production from still imagery.The name derives from extensive use of the technique by American documentarian Ken Burns...
.