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Eastern Airways Magazine, Autumn 2006 (distribution: 10 000  readership: 50 000)



 

City Life, September 2006

 
Thinktank Planetarium (visitor comment, 1st May, 2006)

Last Friday I took a trip to Birmingham where I visited the Thinktank, Birmingham’s

museum of science. Part of the reason for my trip was to see my friend Dave who is a planetarium presenter there. Thinktank is a huge, new building that contains an IMAX cinema, a department of a local university and several floors of interactive science exhibits covering Birmingham's industrial heritage, present day scientific issues in biology and technology and a look at what the future may hold for us. In the "thinkahead" section is the planetarium. It is totally digital, making use of an array of digital projectors to build up a full-dome image. I know that some people prefer the traditional Zeiss projectors, but digital projection does give you the flexibility to show so many different things including photographs, animations of the planets, 3D trips through space and full-dome video. A disadvantage of digital projection is that it makes it very easy to create 'canned' shows that just play back with a pre-recorded show. I'm glad to say that Thinktank is aware of the importance of presenter-led shows and seem to have the right combination of special effects and proper astronomy.

The show I saw was a run-through of the spring night-sky and started off in Birmingham with with cloud and street lights obscuring the view. Not only does this opening let see the limited view you get from a city due to light pollution, but it helps your eyes to adapt to the dark. After a tour through some of the planets, that you can currently see with the naked eye in the evening, we were then transported to a dark sky site. This was accompanied by "Wows!" from the children (and probably some of the adults) present as they suddenly could see thousands of stars. Dave described several constellation patterns before taking us on a trip away from the Earth into our local stellar neighbourhood. This trip drastically distorted the familiar constellation shapes and was a great illustration of the 3D nature of space.

After the show, Dave was able to show me some of the things that the DigiStar 3 can do. It is a truely impressive piece of kit that has a plethora of great features. It behaves like a souped-up combination of Stellarium and Celestia with movie and multi-wavelength capabilities. It was so cool to be surrounded by the Milky Way as it looks to a radio telescope at 408 MHz and switch to a gamma-ray view of the sky at the touch of a button. Thanks to Dave, I was treated to some of the fantastic shows that the Thinktank planetarium presenters are developing. I am now bright green with envy and wish I had my own planetarium to play about with.

Tags: Thinktank | planetarium
Posted in astro blog by Stuart on Monday 01st May 2006 (19:08 UTC) | Add a comment | Permalink
 
Jodcast interview
Jodrell Bank Observatory
March 2006


BBC TV (evening)
Planetarium opening
Note: 8 Meg file
 

BBC TV (morning)
Planetarium opening
Note: 4 Meg file

Out of this world
Dec 19 2005
By Graham Young


THINKTANK'S latest visitor attraction is out of this world!
That's the verdict on the new £500,000 Planetarium at Millennium Point's science museum.

New Oscott mother of two Perdeep Muthi was at the front of the queue for the first public screening at 11am on Saturday, along with daughters Kiran, seven, Monika, five, and friend Shahnaz Alaeipour.

They were treated to what is expected to become the single most popular presentation - a view of what the night sky really looks like from Birmingham.

Perdeep said: "It was very, very interesting - and it's good for all ages.

"We'll come back for some of the shows which are aimed specifically at young children.

"And what I might also do is book something out in the country so that we can stay out and see the night sky."

Perdeep has a family member-ship for Thinktank, so only had to pay £1 each for her Planetarium tickets.

"I think the Thinktank is very good value for money in general," she said.

"Normally we can spend a whole day here, whereas ordinary admission at the Sea Life Centre is nearly twice as much per adult and we feel like we've seen everything there after 90 minutes."

New Oscott Primary School pupil Kiran said: "I thought the Planetarium was good - and I liked the shooting star!"

Also impressed were Chris and Bob Lancaster from Leamington Spa.

The Thinktank members had taken their two godchildren, Andrew Curran, aged 10, and sister Amy, nine, for a day out.

Bob said: "Only when you get out into the deeper parts of the country can you see the Milky Way, so I really enjoyed it."

Chris added: "We like Think-tank because we can either come by road or rail and every time we come here there's something different on."

Andrew, who received a telescope for his 10th birthday in May, said: "I like looking at things from the ground.

"But I don't want to be a spaceman - I'm scared of heights!"

Sister Amy, also a pupil at Our Lady and St Teresa's Catholic Primary School in Leamington Spa, added: "I thought the Planetarium was really good.

"You could see things you didn't know were up there (in the sky) and it felt as if it was all going to land on top of me!"

Planetarium manager Mario Di Maggio said: "We've put a lot of effort into developing the attraction and to be so ready for our first public show was very satisfying.

"The great thing will be when we start to get emails back from people who've picked up our handout sheets after being inspired by what they've seen."

Dr Nick Winterbotham, chief executive of Millennium Point and Thinktank, said: "By launching on the weekend before Christmas when many people were out shopping gave us a soft start to make sure everything works."
 


 

 


Birmingham Mail, Monday 12 December, 2005


 



 


 

 

 
 

Birmingham Post, Saturday 29 October, 2005