The Revival of the Minolta Planetarium

Better than Google Sky, the Minolta Planetarium gets the new Infinium S projector. With new features, better details, and a faster rendering engine, the Infinium S and the control mechanisms are ready for sky exploration in the twenty-first century. Given a private opportunity to "test drive" the equipment, both my sister Rebecca (see New De Anza Planetarium - Bring your binoculars) and I couldn't wait - and we weren't disappointed.

The Minolta Planetarium, located at De Anza college, was a favorite of our family for 30 years, and has finally reopened after three long years undergoing renovation. In 2004, the MS-15 used was becoming antiquated and less useful. The challenge of maintaining it was rapidly growing, much to the chagrin of De Anza. After contacting Minolta, De Anza decided to renovate the planetarium and replace the projector. The new guy is the Infinium S, and it offers many new features. The most striking lies in the rendering of the Milky Way. Instead of a static image, the Infinium draws every little dot with varying intensity to simulate the three dimensions of the sky.

We decided to attend the reopening ceremony in August, and boy, were we surprised! The event was canceled, but lucky for us, technical director, Karl von Ahnen, was wiling to show us the new Minolta planetarium. I made a bee-line for the controls, since I have always held an interest in them, and began noting the radical differences. The control office was no longer hidden away. Now, everyone could (if they turned around 180*) see the operator (isn't it nice that all the seats face one direction?). It had a couple sophisticated computer consoles, a data array, and plenty of manipulatable controls. Coupled with the main computer, the Infinium was a powerful machine.

Karl saw that I was checking out the machine and gave me different suggestions, allowing me to manipulate little things at fist (the lighting in different hues) and then trusted me to work with the bigger controls. He was glad for the oppertunity to talk to the adults face to face and still see the power of the Infinium demonstrated. For me, I loved the ability to tell the computer to simulate different sky orientations based on latitude and longitude. As I explored, Karl got to explain more and more of the Infiniums capabilities. The best was when I unexpectedly (adds spice to life) changed the sky from where we are on Earth to the distant planet of Pluto, where the sky is very different. The audience, surprised, were amazed by how different the sky was out there. I began to take a tour of the different astronomical objects, testing the skies, enjoying a foretaste of what mankind will see when they settle new worlds and build new outposts.

I also enjoyed the time scale controls and the wonderful fade-in/out abilities of the Infinium and constellations. With a palm sweep on one panel, while the sky was turning, the pictorial representations of the constellations gracefully appeared, and disappeared with another palm sweep. The azimuth, zenith overlays gave evinced human emotion better than any astro-guide or map could've. The Infinium turned the old art of searching the constellation book and looking at abstract dots into a three dimensional tour of the sky. Imagine planning out your next Messier Object Marathon, showing new comers where each of the objects are in the sky using a planetarium, and running the real contest of finding those same objects on the real sky. The possibilities are endless. I hope others will see the Minolta planetarium and appreciate the sheer possibilities and outreach it offers. Nothing is so heartening than to see what mankind might see in the future, near or distant, of the sky. It reminds all of the potential of humanity, and the simple beauty of space, the final frontier.