Housed in the shell of the former Omnidome, the planetarium has been in the works for years. It opened on Friday with a show from its director, Waylon Troyer.
“Here we are just a short hop and a rocket off of our big, blue marble,” Troyer said as the dome showed a view of Earth from space. “If you look carefully, you can see all that traffic on I-35 right over there. There's Oklahoma City, there's Dallas.”
During the planetarium’s opening event on Friday, Troyer showed off a blue Mars sunset, a supernova and an Oklahoma City night sky untouched by light pollution.
“We see sunsets nearly every single day of our lives, and we've got some incredible ones here in Oklahoma,” Troyer told the audience. “But being able to see one on another planet is quite an experience.”
Sharing the skies with visitors has always been part of the museum’s mission. Sherry Marshall, the president and CEO of the museum’s executive board, said Science Museum Oklahoma started as a planetarium on the grounds of the State Fair. More recently, the museum housed a planetarium in the middle of its main hall.
“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,” said Sherry Marshall, the president and CEO of the museum’s executive board.
The new Love’s Planetarium features eight 4K digital projectors to show science-based depictions of planets, galaxies and other celestial bodies.
“The amount of technology that is found in this planetarium is unlike any other,” Marshall said. “You can only find it here, unless you go to Shanghai, China.”
The planetarium also uses an analog star ball, which uses pinpoints of light to show what stars would look like in true darkness — something that can’t be achieved with projectors.
“The contrast between the darkest darks that we can get in here and those really sharp, pinpoint stars — that's what makes it so realistic,” Troyer said. “That's what makes it feel like a true sky.”
The planetarium is now offering a variety of shows every day, including programming in Spanish on Saturdays. Troyer said each show will be unique, thanks to the diverse expertise of the planetarium’s presenters and input from the audience.
Entry to the Love’s Planetarium is included with the cost of admission to Science Museum Oklahoma.
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
