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Thread: New Toy

  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by DZ View Post
    That's a very nice instrument, thanks for sharing! It's very similar to one I used to work on, it was the Jena Spacemaster. In my opinion, it's very sad to see so many theaters dump the mechanical/optical instrument in favor of full dome video. There are two problems with this; number one the full dome video just cannot recreate the night sky as well as a planetarium can. 2nd, removing the planetarium from the planetarium theater takes away the mysteriousness, the awe of having such an instrument so prominently displayed in the center of the room. Now, alot of theaters have just a video projector in the center of the room. Don't get me wrong, the technology behind the full dome video is very impressive and the effect you can create is astounding, but, if you want a quality, diverse theater, you should have both a planetarium and full dome video. Not either one, both, and some theaters have been smart enough to implement both instruments.
    I agree completely. The big thing in science education today is called STEM, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. A planetarium projector could be the poster image illustrating “STEM”. Laser projectors too – one of the worst things about Laserium - all those years ago - was our proprietary attitude. We should have figured out a way to pull off the covers and show the kids how it all worked. The success of the Laserium shows was never about the technology...

  2. #12
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
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    that instrument is cool
    i want one...but im a poor guy
    just envy here....

  3. #13
    mixedgas's Avatar
    mixedgas is offline Creaky Old Award Winning Bastard Technologist
    Infinitus Excellentia Ion Laser Dominatus
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    So you ever going to tell us how to crank a given night and time into one of these things? That seems to be as secret as Laserium's barbeque sauce lumia.

    Steve

  4. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by mixedgas View Post
    So you ever going to tell us how to crank a given night and time into one of these things? That seems to be as secret as Laserium's barbeque sauce lumia.

    Steve
    If you mean just to go to a specific time and place - the ZKP3 has encoders on the diurnal, polar, and annual motions so you can just twist the correct knobs till you're there. It also has the old standby equator/ecliptic, meridian, and year counter. If you mean how to align the sun, moon and planets to a specific date - there are friction clamps on the drive gearing for each projector. One gear drives the major motion of the projector, one drives the retrograde motion, and one drives it in declination. Since the gear trains drive from fast to slow it's important to adjust them in the fastest to slowest order. The trick with the ZKP3 is since they didn't use the eccentric and/or elliptical gearing that's present on the larger projectors there are periodic errors for each projector that should be taken into account to arrive at the most generically correct alignment. It's also important to realize that the diurnal motion turns the annual motion one day per day - so lining things up to the meridian by using diurnal motion generates errors.

    The current range of projectors has servo driven planetary projectors, and alignment is a piece of cake.

    And Steve - if there's anything I know about Laserium techniques that you don't yet - all you need to do is ask.

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