We'd be happy to do a special Science on a Sphere demo for you folks. How about some Tuesday evening in the not too distant future? You pick one and we'll be in the lobby to meet you and show you how SoS works. Seth Jarvis, Director Clark Planetarium 110 South 400 West Salt Lake City, Utah 84101 (801) 456-4921 - desk (801) 456-4928 - fax www.clarkplanetarium.org -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Canopus56 Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 11:00 PM To: Utah Astronomy List Serv Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Field trip rep - Clark PlanetariumScience-on-a-Sphere projection globe Last Friday (5/31), I went to Clark Planetarium ( http://www.clarkplanetarium.org/ ) to look at their new acquisition - a Science-on-a-Sphere - display globe. In summary, the SAOS sphere is sufficiently interesting that the club might want consider asking for a special presentation of the sphere with an astronomical theme as a field trip for one of our summer monthly meetings. This is one of 20 nationwide deployments of the NOAA's Science-on-Sphere initiative. http://sos.noaa.gov/ NOAA's Science-on-Sphere is a 6 or 7 foot diameter movie screen that is shaped as a sphere. http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/main.php?g2_itemId=11467 The globe screen is surrounded by four ceiling equilaterally mounted computer room-light computer projectors. These are computer projectors with sufficient power to display in ambient room lighting. http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/main.php?g2_itemId=11471 The result is that any three-dimensional globular object can be projected on the sphere in 3D, such as: Earth http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/main.php?g2_itemId=11473 Jupiter http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/main.php?g2_itemId=11475 Mars http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/main.php?g2_itemId=11477 or the Moon - http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/main.php?g2_itemId=11479 The project sphere's educational strength is to display animations, e.g. - rotating planets, weather patterns and geologic processes. A hint of the sphere in animation mode can be seen in the following two low-resolution videos that I captured last Friday: members.csolutions.net/fisherka/astronote/photos/EarthWeather.avi 2.75Megs low res members.csolutions.net/fisherka/astronote/photos/MarsRotation.avi 1.6Megs low res Higher resolution example videos of currently available projections can be seen at the NOAA Science-on-a-Sphere website: SOAS demo movies webpage http://sos.noaa.gov/gallery/index.html Consistent with NOAAs Earth science focus, most of the 150 available animations deal with the weather. For example, 24 hours of near real time weather satellite imagery can be displayed, a 400 year history of Earth's magnetic lines or a topographic Earth. Topographic Earth http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/main.php?g2_itemId=11481 For astronomy, they also a great set of planetary and solar animations that allows you to look the planets in large size and in animated rotation. You are probably asking yourself, as I did, with a big shrug, "So what? I can already see 3D animations in my computer. I've seen Damain Peach's Jupiter rotation movie." A few minutes with the sphere quickly changed my ideas about it. There is a quantitative learning difference in having a 3D 6 foot dynamic model to walk around as opposed to flat images. I have studied the Moon for some years and never really appreciated the relative sizes of the South Polar Atiken and Australe impact basins - although I've seen numerous maps, images and Google Earth simulations of the same. Similarly, the rotating animation of Mars really started to fix in my mind the relative geography of the major features in ways I had not previously experienced. South-Polar Atiken Basin http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/main.php?g2_itemId=11483 Australe Basin http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/main.php?g2_itemId=11479 Damian Peach Mars and Jupiter rotation movies http://damianpeach.com/index2.htm This Soas projection globle appears to be a beta deployment of a new product. As such, there is alot of room for new projections to be added and more potential to be developed. For example, while near real time satellite weather imaging is available; near real time Soho is not. Similarly, the NASA JPL Horizon system could be a feed source for near real time simulations of current phases of each planet in the solar system. Expert amateurs in a particular areas will probably note datasets for any one focus area missing. For example, there are four or five USGS lunar datasets on geology and topography that are not included in the available datasets. In that it is a beta deployment, there were a number of problems and areas for potential improvement in the current system. First, is that it is deployed in "push" education mode with heavy commercialization, consistent with the Clark movie business model. The sphere display pushes passive content, which bored about 90 percent of the groups that walked by the sphere. The first 20 minutes that I watched the sphere consisted of commercial advertisements projected over planets. This was followed by a cheerful voice proclaiming "These science animations have been brought to you by NOAA." For example, although I was there almost a full hour, it was not possible to take a picture of the Moon without the logo "Brought to you by Zions Bank" plastered over the globe. After a first 1/2 hour of commercials, _then_ the NOAA science demo really started playing. Unlike an Exploratorium science education model, the sphere is deployed in push mode. About 80 percent of passerbys watched it like it was a big screen tv, became bored within 60 seconds and walked on. Maybe 10 percent stayed 2-3 minutes and another 10 percent for 5 minutes. The sphere would be a far more engaging display if the sphere was deployed in Exploratorium "pull" learning mode. E.g. - allowing the Information Desk employees or the sales desk employees to start any animation on request. A "whack-a-mole" console or a public terminal that allowed the public to select an animation would far more engaging then a scripted TV presentation. Even scheduled lecture-demo times would be an improvement. To a docent's credit, he offered track down the education director to see if they would do a special demo for me. Finally, as an idea for product improvement, the whole sphere projector seems to have been conceputalized as a projection _surface_ when it can display a 3D _volume_. Perhaps there is some technical reason for this limitation; maybe the projectors will not display a realistic 3D volume. But imagine a 3 inch glass sphere that contains a leaf and five or six grazing ants surrounding by four microscope cameras. Then imagine 18 inch long projected ants crawling around in 3D on the inside of the sphere! Or how about a two foot tall amobae crawling across a virtual microscope slide, diatoms swimming in a glass sphere of pond water, that National Computing Center animation the 3D Milky Way you see in the NOAA opening credits, glob cluster M3 in 3D, or Tully's 3D simulation of galaxies within 40 megaparsecs. Sorry for the overlength post - and the string of recent long posts. Must be my inner-geek escaping again. Again, the sphere is that the club might want consider asking for a special demo of the sphere with an astronomical theme as a field trip for one of our summer monthly meetings. Peace - Kurt _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://gallery.utahastronomy.com Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com