Science Museum Oklahoma plans $8 million planetarium renovation
Officials with Science Museum Oklahoma have announced an $8 million plan to build a state-of-the-art planetarium.
Museum officials said the planetarium will be one of few in the world offering live shows with a hybrid optical-digital system. The planetarium is expected to be completed in fall 2023.
"The One Giant Leap initiative is going to turn the universe into the world's biggest classroom," said Linda Maisch, the museum's vice president of community engagement. "The optical projector will create twinkling stars, and the digital projector will create all of those wonderful nebulae and deep space objects that will amaze and delight visitors. It will also bring us NASA's latest findings in almost real time."
The 390,000-square-foot museum is one of the largest in the United States. The museum welcomes around 500,000 guests each year.
The museum was last expanded in 2016 when a $22.4 million project added a new entrance, exterior enhancements and CurioCity, a 20,000-square-foot interactive village.
“We knew we had outgrown our old planetarium,” Maisch said. "It’s like you are trying to watch a 3D movie on a black and white television screen.”
The museum's original OmniDome planetarium, which was constructed in 1978, will be torn down. The space will house the new planetarium.
What will be inside the new planetarium?
The new planetarium will include a simulation of the Milky Way galaxy with 8 million stars, 9,500 bright twinkling stars, 56 nebulae and other deep space objects. The equipment will project 88 constellations plus the sun, moon and planets. All projections will have high intensity LEDs and fiber optics.
The museums' educators will be able to take guests to explore space anywhere in the universe they want to go.
"You will feel like you are really there," Maisch said. "No other place in the nation has this experience, but we are going to have it right here."
The high-resolution images will provide audiences with a realistic night sky free of light pollution — something many people never experience outside a planetarium.
What kind of events will it host?
The planetarium will serve as a theater for innovative performances and offer more interactivity with space that can be used by musicians, featured presenters, early childhood programming and special events.
The museum also will use the planetarium for classes on chemistry, physics, botany, biology and more.
"There is not a limit to the things we can do," Maisch said. "The planetarium allows us to take all of those subjects and bring them to life in this huge interactive space."
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: $8 million planetarium planned for OKC's Science Museum Oklahoma
