UAA’s Planetarium and Visualization Theater produces more than a colorful array of constellations

This story is a part of The Northern Light’s investigative series into art culture on campus, which follows different groups at UAA and their experience with campus art.

The Planetarium and Visualization Theater is located on the second floor of the ConocoPhillips Integrated Science Building. The impressive theater finished renovation in February and will receive a new manager along with a “soft-opening” to the public sometime this year.

According to UAA’s Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Jenny McNulty, the Planetarium and Visualization Theater offers more than just a detailed look at the night sky. She said the planetarium is “like an IMAX theater” in its capabilities.

Professor of Physics and Astronomy Katherine Rawlins demonstrated to TNL the range of possibilities the Planetarium and Visualization Theater is capable of.

The renovation of the theater created a new experience for those who control the master computer. Rawlins participated in a week's worth of training to become familiar with the intricate equipment.

Rawlins sat down at the master computer that controls five different computers, lights and two projectors. The control space is filled with an abundance of dials, buttons and sliders, making the area look like a small production studio.

She then dimmed the lights and explored both the exterior and interior of an incredibly detailed 3D model of the International Space Station.

Rawlins then moved on to the Mars Rover, which was intricately controllable and allowed the observer to vicariously explore Mars.

Interactable 3D models like the Mars Rover are very detailed and the controller can move many parts of the model. Each tiny section of the model must be created separately and then coded together to work in unison.

The dark room then faded into a colorful interior model of wooden walls illuminated by an indoor campfire. The camera slowly exited the 3D model and looked up to the stars to display the cultural perception of constellations by Indigenous Navajo peoples.

A seven-minute-long video played above and featured beautiful renderings of constellations in the night sky against the backdrop of mountains in the American Southwest. The narration of the short movie was perfectly balanced over the ambient sounds of birds, thunder and music.

These are just a few of the many examples of scientific and artistic capabilities of the Planetarium and Visualization Theater. Experiencing the theater’s visual performance is similar to a virtual reality headset, which Rawlins explained that there is a slight connection in design to such devices.

Students who have attended an Astronomy class or a Planetarium and Visualization Theater show may have seen the details embedded into every inch of our unexplored universe through the theater’s models, but how far does that detail go?

Rawlins “zoomed out” on the universe to show the limits. We first arrived at Saturn, where we traveled through rings of modeled dust and thousands of particles that surround the planet.

Further exploration of the universe unveiled the Local Group, distant galaxies, lanes of dust and possibilities of planets that we have not yet discovered.

For example, we have only seen pictures of the Andromeda Galaxy from Earth’s perspective, but the people who created this model of the universe took the time to render an entire representation of the galaxy where each perspective is explorable.

Rawlins then noted that not every show involves Astronomy. “Not all of our shows are about Astronomy. Many of them are, but not all of them. We used to have a show about earthquakes. We have shows about climate science and ecology. There is one about how the human eye works. There is even one about the artist M.C. Escher. So there are a wide variety of shows,” said Rawlins.

There is also biology and chemistry content available in the Planetarium. A large 3D model of the human body can be explored in detail or as a whole. The rendering allows the controller to view the nervous, organ and lymphatic systems.

“You could use this facility to represent any kind of thing in three dimensions and interact with it. I actually talked to someone from the Art Department about taking sculptures and scanning them to make a three-dimensional model that could be interacted with visually. Another fun thing you could do is take panoramic photography or hemispherical photography and look at the images in here,” said Rawlins.

If students are interested in displaying something, such as an art or photography project, Rawlins stated to simply ask a faculty member what can be done.

“We are very much wanting to get the rest of the university community involved in producing content for this facility. It wasn’t built to be hoarded by the astronomers. It’s here for the entire campus community. Help us dream of things to do with it.”