At the Science Center, the planetarium has reopened with a first-of-its-kind star projector, immersive digital technology, and a mission to inspire visitors to keep looking up.
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umankind has been observing the stars for tens of thousands of years. From the earliest star charts carved on mammoth tusks to the careful positioning of Cahokia’s mounds located in St. Louis’ backyard, people have looked to astronomy to create calendars, track comets crossing Earth’s orbit, monitor solar activity, inform theories of physics, and wonder about our small place in the vast cosmos. As our understanding of the universe grows, new questions emerge, and advanced technologies allow us to further explore. With the recent addition of the GOTO Chiron III Hybrid Star Projector – the first of its kind in the United States – and the Cosm Digistar Full-Dome Visualization System, the Saint Louis Science Center’s James S. McDonnell Planetarium now blends educator-led astronomy presentations with high-resolution digital imagery. Together, the technologies make it the largest and most advanced hybrid planetarium in the nation. The planetarium reopened on July 18 after a six-month installation inside the Bill and Laura Orthwein StarBay, made possible through a gift from the Centene Foundation. Seated in one of the planetarium chairs – or lying on the floor for the “real outside experience,” as astrophysicist and planetarium manager Will Snyder puts it – visitors can gaze up at a sky full of stars. But with these recent upgrades, the building’s 80-foot projection dome becomes more than a window into the night sky: It transforms into an immersive journey through space. “What you’re going to see all comes from the center of the room, and there’s a lot going on there,” Snyder says, referring
to the ball-like GOTO Chiron III star projector. It displays all 9,500 stars visible to the unaided eye in accurate color, plus more than 100 million stars, hundreds of deep-sky objects such as nebulae and galaxies, realistic views of the sun, moon, and visible planets, and celestial events including eclipses and transits. Rather than relying on pre-rendered animations, the Digistar system renders
scientific data in real time, allowing stargazers to visualize everything from ocean currents and weather patterns on Earth to the mind-bending warping of space-time around the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*. (For perspective, Sgr A* is about 4 million times larger than the sun.) “One of those mysterious black holes that just a little bit ago would have been on the fringe of our understanding is now
laduenews.com | AUGUST 7, 2026
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