Renovation Plan

What was once on the forefront of technology, the present planetarium is in need of major renovation from top to bottom. This transformation will meet the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s students that go Beyond the Stars. The new space will be referred to as The Dome at New Canaan High School, or The Dome for short.

With the support of the community, The Dome transformation will include the following upgrades.

Dome

Seams are the enemy of the immersive experience. For decades, projection domes were made with overlapping or folded panels as is with our current planetarium. While this solution was adequate for the low brightness levels of classic planetariums, modern projection systems project much more brightly, revealing visible seams with traditional seaming technologies.

With the new Spitz NanoSeam™ dome, every panel is flush with its neighbors. No overlapping seams or exposed rivets lending to a more realistic experience.

Projector System

The new state-of-the-art Evans & Sutherland Digistar 7 Fulldome display redefines what is possible in a digital planetarium with its advanced user interface, enhanced real-time rendering capabilities, and 4K full dome video playback. With Digistar 7, the planetarium operators have a wide range of storytelling tools available to customize presentations to any audience with ease.

  • The display system comes with built-in cloud sharing capability that facilitates collaboration between educators and scientists.

    The Cloud Library features more than 1,000 unique user-generated submissions (e.g. images, audio, video, 3D models, fulldome shows, vignettes, and scripts), including over 20 full-length shows and 420 panoramas.

    Digistar users can upload and share shows, models, videos and scripts with one another, extending the impact beyond the dome.

  • Digistar Domecasting enables The Dome to broadcast or host remote presentations. Join industry leaders, expert presenters and educators in sharing live events.

    Digistar’s integrated calendar keeps NCPS informed of upcoming live Domecasting presentations, as well as astronomical and historical events.

  • Digistar provides direct access to more than 30,000 items of diverse and continually growing scientific data through DATA2DOME, high-resolution planetary surfaces, Science on a Sphere, sky surveys, NOAA Weather data, massive astronomical databases and much, much more.

    Students can explore the human anatomy to prism refraction to Dalton’s Law to color theory to sine-cosine wave to robot movements.

Lighting & Sound

Upgraded lighting and sound with dome-mounted LED cove lighting and stereo sound system. The sound system includes amp, mixer, four (4) two-way speakers mounted behind the dome, wireless mic and assistive learning system.

Seating

Comfortable, movable seating to fit up to 60 students allows students to customize seating layouts for collaborative and social learning.

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