Montréal Planetarium

In 2012, Montréal will have a new planetarium based out by the Biodome in the Olympic Park. The current one has been going since 1966 and is therefore due for retirement but even in its advanced years it packs a huge punch. The Zeiss Mark 6 (upgraded from a Mark 5) produces a beautiful sky as any well-looked after analogue planetarium would do, but there’s more than just this going for Montréal.

The first thing that hits you as you walk in is the sheer size of the place and how much room the projector itself takes up. Showing both northern and southern hemisphere skies it sits in the centre of the hall exuding magnificence. Around it are 385 seats, fewer than there were originally, because they removed some to be able to build a couple of small stages for the presenters.

Around this dome, the largest in Canada, are a series of slide projectors that make a wonderfully satisfying clatter every time the show moves forward. It is the augmentations that allow your breath to be stolen away by this place; it can do special effects, landscapes and digital projection, but these are all separate systems that are controlled via a small submarine-style room next door. Believe me when I say that this is quite something, as my inner techie was buzzing and leaping like there was no tomorrow.

As it is an old system, the Omni1 part of it can only run in MS-DOS on 386s, the computers of choice 15 years ago. The sound and such used to be on DAT tapes, but has since moved to TASCAM X-48 HDD. The shows are even compiled on 3.5” floppy discs, and nostalgia twigged when I saw that. They have to go to great length to get the slides produced too; pictures are sent digitally to New Mexico, altered there and forwarded to Colorado where they are printed and shipped back up to Montréal.

You may think after this description that the old system wasn’t too good – let me set you right if this is indeed the case. The combination of the banks of circuit boards, DVD players, knobs and switches is to produce a multimedia experience which combines the beautiful skies of the analogue with some of the functionality of digital. To take things to the next level however you have to watch a show being performed.

All shows are pre-recorded with a blend of live presentation. In a typical show the last 15 minutes are when the Zeiss raises itself up to full height and really shows off its prize. I watched as Louie Bernstein, one of the head writers gave us a show about Saturn and its moons and this was such a thrill to go between voiceover and visuals to a science show done before my very eyes. For example, to show how Saturn’s density (and is the only planet of this solar system so to do) there was a small bath of water and a scale model of the planet. There it was in front of me – Saturn, with the density of wood, floating in water.

At the very beginning of the show whilst people were entering, Louie gave us some ‘astronews’ talking about various things hitting the headlines in the world of astronomy, such as Titan’s internal structure and vulcanism on Venus, at a pleasing level of information. The show itself, due to it being partly presenter-led, was also extremely well tailored to the audience and I was blown away by the detail and the graphics high above me.

On weekend mornings, children’s shows are put on whilst on those evenings there is one called the Quest for the Origins of Life about ALMA. 90% of the shows are created in house, simply because it’s a difficult piece of kit to adapt other shows for; they also have a 3:1 ratio of French:English shows. At 8 Canadian dollars, it’s well worth a visit, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.