Computer Graphics World

JULY 2010

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Scientific Visualization ■ ■ ■ ■ StarPower By Karen Moltenbrey Before the millennium, most planetariums explored the heavens using non-digital equipment, such as “star balls,” which—among other hurdles—were lim- ited in their unidirectional ability of showing the night sky solely from the perspective of planet Earth. Since that time, an increasing number of planetariums have embraced digital technologies, starting fi rst with the installation of SGI supercomputers and, more recently, with commodity machines. “T rough commoditization and Moore’s Law, other solutions started to become viable when the SGI Onyx became unstable,” says Benjy Bernhardt, director of engineering at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, home to the Hayden Planetarium. “Powerful PCs, CPUs, and GPUs have brought the power and func- tionality that used to be the exclusive domain of really high end, refrigerator-size computers down to small boxes, even laptops.” At the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, as well as at the Gates Planetarium in Denver and the Mor- rison Planetarium in San Francisco, a digital evolution occurred, enabling those museums to deliver immersive experiences that were unheard of just a decade or two earlier. Now, visitors can fl y through amazing 3D images of cosmic phenomena that are created from complex data simulations for scientifi c accuracy. Unlike a feature fi lm, the sole purpose of which is to entertain, a space show is fi rst and foremost a scientifi c en- deavor, requiring planetarium staff to review the scientifi c data from various simulation and visualization processes, and integrate information into a comprehensive presenta- tion. As a result, the data sets created and used by plan- etariums are exceedingly complex, requiring space-age hardware and software solutions that will grow and evolve to support new out-of-this-world discoveries. Space exploration has matured, just as computing and visualization have, taking planetarium visitors far beyond our own galaxy to the ends of the known universe. July 2010 37

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