South Florida Museum Debuts Planetarium Upgrades

BRADENTON – The new Bishop Planetarium at the South Florida Museum is now a state-of-the-art astronomy education center, with stunning multimedia capabilities, that are among the most advanced planetarium technologies in the world. The new Digistar 5 Dual-Projection System was installed earlier this month and began its use in shows last week.

The system improves the viewer experience of the Museum’s expanding full-dome show library with projectors that are more than three times as bright and twelve times crisper (higher contrast) than the previous projectors, allowing for exploration of Earth through the use of 200 continually updated satellite datasets of our planet’s land, ocean, atmosphere and climate and live Bing and OnTerra views of the entire planet.

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“We waited for the new Digistar system to be released, and I'm happy to say that I'm glad we did,” says Bishop Planetarium Director Jeff Rodgers. “The projection is bright, crisp and beautiful. And the new astronomy software is simply amazing. The stars in the night sky look fantastic, but there's so much more. We have a digital, three-dimensional map of the entire universe. We can lift off from Earth and fly out of our solar system, out of our galaxy, and out to the very edge of the universe. Or we can orbit Earth, using satellite data to observe and understand our planet in a whole new way. It's hard to imagine a more powerful set of tools for exploring our universe and our place in it.”

The museum will host a free Open House from 5-7:30 p.m. November 7 to give the public the opportunity to see this new system in person. During the Open House, the museum will offer ongoing Planetarium demonstrations, as well as astronomy games and activities, manatee presentations and access to the entire Museum.