Category Archives: fulldome shows

fulldome, fulldome shows, fulldome video, International Dark-Sky Association, light pollution, Loch Ness Productions

Losing the Dark?

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Light Pollution Video Released

All right!  I can finally talk about this project Loch Ness Productions has been working on with the International Dark-Sky Association.  It’s a video called Losing the Dark and it went live today for download today!  It tells the story of light pollution and how we can work together to mitigate it, all in 6.5 minutes. If you run a domed theater (either fulldome or classic), there’s a file for you!  Just visit here at the Loch Ness Productions page for the show to get the version you need (or arrange to get frames if your theater needs very high-resolution frames).

Educators, outreach professionals and others who want to show this program in their classrooms and other venues can download a flat-screen version at the IDA’s Losing the Dark page.

It’s been an amazing project to produce. We worked with visualizers, animators, and photographers from around the world, and both Mark and I did some photography for the show as well. I also wrote the script and supplied the narration for the show, and worked closely with the International Dark-Sky Association on the science behind the script. Mark C. Petersen did the soundtrack and provided his GEODESIUM space music, supplied some time-lapse and still photography, and did the final compositing of the video.

Our support team was huge: I can’t thank Scott Kardel, Dr. Connie Walker, and the members of the IDA Education committee enough for their help and support. We also thank Starmap and the Fred Maytag Family Foundation for their generous support of the project. The International Planetarium Society supplied a seed grant to start off the project, and IDA members have also helped underwrite the costs of production.

Help spread the news about mitigating light pollution and using light only where it’s needed. Otherwise, we are, as the show says, losing the dark of night at the speed of light.

 

 

astronomy, astronomy education, astronomy news, astrophysics, fulldome, fulldome shows, galaxies, hubble space telescope, Loch Ness Productions, Mars, starbirth, stargazing, stellar ages

Across the Light-years from Andromeda

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Revisiting the Past

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Light Years from Andromeda, 2009

This week Mark and I are releasing a fulldome show version of the very first Loch Ness Productions planetarium show I ever wrote, called Light Years from Andromeda. It tells one of the most important stories in astronomy and cosmology — that of cosmic distance, and humanity’s quest to understand the universe. It is, as we say on the show’s Web page touting the show, “a journey of epic proportions across space and time.”

It seems particularly appropriate to talk about it today, with the release of a new, more precise value for the Hubble Constant. That constant is one of the numbers astronomers use to determine the expansion rate of the universe.  Knowing that expansion rate helps us also determine other factors like the size of the universe and just how old the universe really is. But, the root of all this knowledge is cosmic distance.

Distance in the universe is important to understand, and it is measured by using “standard candles” in the darkness. The standard candles are usually specific types of supernova explosions and, in particular,  a type of pulsating star called a Cepheid variable.  These pulsate with a regular rhythm and they are found in every galaxy we’ve seen so far. You can use the observations of those candles to derive distances across the cosmos.

In Light Years from Andromeda, we focus on a distance that most people have heard of, even if they aren’t up on the latest in cosmology: the light-year. It’s the distance that light travels in a year at a speed of roughly 300,000 kilometers per second. We wanted to bring that figure into some kind of reality for people, so I decided to take them out to the Andromeda Galaxy, which lies some 2.5 million light-years away.  We begin the show there, some 2.5 million years ago, and we bring people back home to the Milky Way, across all that time and space at the speed of light. Along the way we discuss human history set against that travel time. And, when we arrive at Earth, we learn about light-speed and the way that we can use light to measure cosmic distances.  It’s really a simple concept and a simple story to tell. And, it’s been very satisfying to see the show come to life in the new fulldome medium, where we really CAN fly from one galaxy to another and take in the breathtaking beauty of the cosmos.  And, to have it come out now, when the precision of the Hubble Constant is even better than before — well, it just sends chills up my spine. These are the times that make my day as a science writer!

(Check out the trailer for the show below.)

Light Years from Andromeda trailer