Planetarium

The planetarium, one of the main features of Emory’s new Mathematics and Science Center, is a 56-seat classroom space designed for teaching undergraduate astronomy and hosting events and seasonal programs that explore and celebrate the cosmos. When the house lights go down, it’s a place to sit back in comfortable chairs, relax, gaze up and imagine that the 35-foot domed ceiling above really is filled with countless stars as it appears to be. In fact, each one is being projected by a relatively small but hard-working piece of equipment stationed below.

Dr. Erin Bonning, Planetarium Director

What can the Skymaster do?

• The Skymaster ZKP3 shows everything you would see with the naked eye on a clear night under perfect viewing conditions.
• It projects over 7,000 individual stars in addition to star clusters, nebulae, galaxies, the Milky Way, constellations, the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and the Earth’s Sun and Moon.
• It excels at representing the apparent movement of celestial objects and can accelerate their motion to help make a point.
• The Skymaster is usually programmed to simulate the sky over Atlanta; however, it can easily represent the night sky from any place in the northern or southern hemispheres.
• It can also function as a time machine by recreating the night sky for any moment in history—past or future.
• And, it can even project line drawings that outline the major constellations—an especially helpful feature for those of us with less imagination than the ancient astronomers who named them thousands of years ago.
  

Our Planetarium's claim to fame

There are over 500 Zeiss planetariums world wide. The Emory Skymaster, installed on July 24, 2002, is the only one built on its own rising platform; when not in use, it descends below floor level to be hidden out of sight. Then the planetarium becomes a normal classroom, perfect for lectures and colloquia.

Also, our planetarium has a direct video feed from the 24-inch telescope located several stories above in the building's rooftop observatory. This means that live astronomical events can be projected and viewed by a large audience in a classroom setting in the planetarium. The image that the audience sees is exactly the same as the image seen through the eyepiece of the telescope at exactly the same time.

The Skymaster’s compact size is especially well-suited to university planetariums; it is the smallest of several types of star projectors manufactured by the German-based Carl Zeiss Company--a leading producer of optical equipment that has been in business since 1846. The firm created the world’s first
planetarium in Munich in 1923.

Find out more about Special Events in the planetarium and the Emory Astronomy Club.

A number of special events and seasonal programs are planned throughout the year for the enjoyment of the Emory community and local groups. Topics are most often astronomical, but the planetarium’s cozy ambience and intimate scale make it a setting for live music and the performing arts on campus whenever possible.