State-of-the-art Soref Planetarium opens at IMAX dome theater

WISCONSIN’S only IMAX dome theater this month becomes one of the region’s largest and most advanced planetariums.

On Nov. 10, the Milwaukee Public Museum, 800 W. Wells St., officially opens the Daniel M. Soref Planetarium with two planetarium shows in the museum’s Humphrey IMAX Dome Theater.

The planetarium will use the IMAX theater’s 74-foot-diameter, hemispherical domed screen to take audiences to the deepest reaches of the universe through cutting-edge video projection technology.

The heart of the theater’s multimedia and planetarium capabilities will be the Digistar 3 projection system. The system uses multiple video projectors to produce a full color image that fills the giant screen. The choice of objects to view ranges from models of the solar system to simulations of archaeological digs and ancient ruins.

“Any object that can be rendered on a computer can be projected onto the 60-foot-tall IMAX domed screen,” said Jeffrey Bass, executive director of the Humphrey IMAX and Daniel M. Soref Planetarium.

More than 40 theaters in the world use the Digistar 3 computer video system.  The museum will join the league of some the world’s most renowned sky theaters, including the Griffith Park Planetarium in Los Angeles and Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

The Humphrey IMAX Dome Theater was constructed in 1996. It was the first giant-screen theater in Wisconsin and remains the state’s only IMAX dome.

Each planetarium presentation will be preceded by a seasonal depiction of the night sky in Milwaukee. The two presentations opening Nov. 10 are:

• “Stars of the Pharaohs” which travels to Egypt to visit temples and tombs of the ancient world, recreated in their original splendor through the Digistar system. Viewers can experience the mystery of ancient beliefs and their expression in the night sky and see how science was used to tell time, make a workable calendar and align huge monuments.

• “Wonders of the Universe,” which peers deep into space through the eyes of the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and travels back billions of year to witness the birth of the universe.

An exciting music entertainment program also opens Nov. 24. “Sonicvision” is a one-of-a-kind computer-generated musical and visual experience with a mix by Moby and featuring tracks from Radiohead, U2, David Bowie, Coldplay and other individual performers and groups.

The current schedule of IMAX films offers daytime shows throughout the week, with evening shows added on Friday and Saturday. Tickets are $8 for adults (16-61), $5.50 for seniors (62 plus) and $5.50 for children (3-15); For information on IMAX and Planetarium showtimes and tickets, visit www.mpm.edu or call 278-2728.