Inside the same dome where IMAX films once took moviegoers to the top of Mount Everest or the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Waylon Troyer blasted off Friday morning for Mars’ own version of the Grand Canyon, Valles Marineris.
“Goodbye Earth; goodbye Moon. Goodbye, eight billion other people. We’ll see you all later; we’ll be back. Goodbye, my two cats that I left at home; hopefully, you guys don’t make a mess while I’m gone,” quipped Troyer, the planetarium director at Science Museum Oklahoma.
“But here in our new planetarium, it only takes us a few seconds to get from Earth to Mars.”
After years of reaching for the stars, staffers and supporters of Science Museum Oklahoma finally saw them align Friday with the grand opening of the new cutting-edge, multimillion-dollar Love’s Planetarium, billed as one of the nation’s top planetariums.
“When we talk about world class, we mean it. This is a world-class facility,” said Science Museum Oklahoma President and CEO Sherry Marshall during the ceremony.
“We are holding up the Oklahoma Standard. When we talk about doing things in Oklahoma, we don’t do it halfway. We go all out. So, if we are going to offer an educational experience for the families and children of Oklahoma, it is going to be top-notch.”
Public viewings in the Love’s Planetarium began Friday afternoon. They are included with regular museum admission.
Why and how did Science Museum Oklahoma build a new planetarium?
Founded in 1958, Science Museum Oklahoma welcomes about 600,000 guests a year, and the planetarium has been a popular attraction for more than 60 years. The 390,000-square-foot museum is one of the largest science museums in the country.
“We started as a planetarium at the fairgrounds as a vision of John Kirkpatrick to bring this to the community. And it’s that vision that’s brought us here today,” Marshall said, before she and other museum leaders turned the ceremonial “key to the universe” to officially open the new planetarium with dramatic showers of sparkles and puffs of smoke.
Although the Love’s Planetarium is situated on the second floor of the museum’s east end, longtime fans will notice a change before they ever walk inside the doors: Just a few days ago, the exterior dome, which formerly housed the OmniDome Theatre, was painted a deep Mars red instead of the former shade of pale blue.
After years of planning, development and finally construction, the new planetarium replaces the long-shuttered, seven-story, giant-screen dome theater, which opened in 2000 and closed in 2015, as museum staffers had difficulty finding films formatted for it, as well as parts for the aging projection equipment.
Since maintaining the 40-year-old projector in the museum’s former Kirkpatrick Planetarium also had become problematic, the OKC museum in 2019 launched its One Giant Leap Capital campaign to build the new planetarium. Bill Nye, aka “The Science Guy,” helped launch the campaign.
“It has been on our long-range plan for a while. … When our console in our old planetarium literally caught fire, it was that crossroads that made us decide that if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right,” Marshall said.
Although the project was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, museum officials announced in fall 2022 that Love’s Travel Stops had donated $3.5 million to relaunch efforts to build the new planetarium.
“We have a history with the science museum, of supporting them on larger projects, so whenever they came to us a few years ago … and they had this vision of turning the old IMAX theater into something that’s really a world-class planetarium, it wasn’t too hard for us to get behind it,” Jenny Love Meyer, chief culture officer for Love’s, told The Oklahoman.
The museum broke ground in December 2022 on the Love’s Planetarium. In autumn 2023, the Chickasaw Nation made a $1.5 million contribution to the project.
“For kids, this new planetarium will help them become innovators and creative thinkers and set them up for success as they become leaders for tomorrow. Children across the state will get to experience this incredible facility and hopefully be inspired, entertained and educated,” Love Meyer said.
“This is an incredible enhancement to the already thriving arts and culture we have here in Oklahoma City. While it’s a treasure for those who live here, I expect it will also play a role in tourism for our city.”
Although the cost of building the new planetarium exceeded the latest $8 million projections, Marshall said supporters stepped up to ensure the project could be completed without the nonprofit museum taking on debt.
What can visitors expect from Science Museum Oklahoma’s new planetarium?
The new OKC planetarium is one of the only ones in North or South America using a hybrid digital-optical projection system. The Love’s Planetarium includes an optical projector with a digital system that produces 9,500 bright stars, 56 nebulae and clusters for binocular viewing and about 8 million detailed stars to recreate the Milky Way, all with high intensity LEDs and fiber optics.
The planetarium uses a GOTO Orpheus Star Ball, which produces the highest quality star reproductions available, allowing audiences to view a night sky free of light pollution and trek through the universe without leaving the museum.
“There’s those two primary pieces of technology that you’ll get to see during the show, and that’s, of course, our eight 4K projectors that are surrounding you. Now, each individual projector has a resolution of 4K, but the entire dome resolution is 8K. … One of my favorite ways to show that off is with the crisp details on the surface of Mars,” Troyer said.
“When we turn that star ball on … and we go to our true dark sky without any cloud cover or anything, the contrast between the darkest darks that we can get in here and those really sharp, pinpoint stars is what makes it so realistic. That’s what makes it feel like a true sky, and we can re-create the twinkling effect really well.”
The new facility provides visitors unobstructed sightlines, and the accessible space offers wheelchair access, wide rows and an Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant hearing assistance system.
Visitors can expect to see multiple planetarium shows daily, with as many as eight showings on Saturdays. The planetarium schedule is at sciencemuseumok.org/planetarium.
In addition to regular interactive educational programming, the museum will offer shows for younger visitors and Spanish-speaking audiences. Plus, the new facility will be able to host musicians, featured presenters, special events and more.
The completion of the new planetarium marks the biggest change at Science Museum Oklahoma since 2016, when the venerable institution finished a two-year $22.4 million capital project that moved the entrance to the opposite end of the building from the dome and introduced the popular 20,000-square-foot interactive family exhibit CurioCity.
Now that the new planetarium is open, Marshall said visitors can expect to see more changes in the near future, including the removal of the former planetarium and expanded astronomy exhibits.
Along with giving some of the first visitors to the Love’s Planetarium a close-up tour of the ridges, cliffs and valleys of Mars’ Valles Marineris, Troyer swept them off to the blue-green gas giant Neptune, let them experience the bright flash and rumbling boom of an exploding supernova and even transported them to “the edge of the observable universe.”
“Our staff is so incredibly passionate about our mission, about sparking curiosity and expanding knowledge, and this is an exceptional tool that we have put in their hands. … Every astronaut that ever went to space got their start in a planetarium,” Marshall said.
“When we talk about looking to the stars, it really does spur wonder and curiosity and innovation. But so many people, children and families may not have the opportunity to see a true night sky unoccluded by light pollution, and that’s one of the things that we can offer.”
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