Bogotá planetarium renews its projection system with Christie

Bogotá's new astronomical enclosure infrastructure includes two 4K32-RGB, managed by pandoras box 8 and Mystique with support of the professional services of Christie.

He Bogotá Planetarium (Colombia) It has become the most advanced astronomical enclosure in Latin America thanks to the renewal of its projection system that includes a comprehensive solution of Christie and its Professional Services for preventive maintenance of the system.

The new infrastructure includes two pure laser equipment Griffyn 4K32-RGB, managed by Pandoras Box 8 and the alignment and recalibration solution based on camera Mystique.

After 52 years using Opto-Mechanics projection systems in your dome, with capacity to 376 personas, The planetarium was looking for a technological leap that allowed its audience to live immersion experiences in the arts, the most realistic science and technology with the highest quality.

"The starting point was clearly the resolution. We needed 4K projectors, since most productions for planetarians come in that resolution, But we also wanted a friendly solution with the environment that would not use lamps, that it had a greater durability of the lighting source and that it was more energy efficient, as is the case of Griffyn. The team also offers us more vivid colors, a better contrast and a great light power (34.000 lumens) To cover our dome of 23 metros, tripling the luminosity of our previous system ”, remember Carlos Molina, Bogotá Planetarium Coordinator, which is under the orbit of the District Institute of Arts (Idartes) of the Mayor's Office of the Colombian capital.

Joaquín Gutiérrez, Director of Bigvideo, One of the companies that won the public tender for the supply and integration of the project in association with the companies Merge y of design, comments that Griffyn “was the perfect choice for its versatility, Pointing technology, light power, resolution, size, Weight and price, In addition to its possibility of updating 3D in the future ".

The two planetarium giffyn work in blending, one of them covering the northern hemisphere of the dome and the other the south, each bathing approximately one 70% of the dome and thus achieving an appropriate overlap for the necessary blending/warping. The projectors have been equipped with special navitar lenses for projection on concave surface, which allows a homogeneous focus on a 90%.

For projection control, two pandoras boxing machines are used, specifically a Manager and a Server With Pandoras Box software 8, as well as the Widget Designer tool to create custom applications.

“Pandoras Box is a very robust solution that deals with the planetarium to launch the contents, also capturing double 4K signal a 60 Hz of the station DIGISTAR 7, The astronomical software of Evans & Sutherland which was acquired for the project ", Joaquín Gutiérrez clarifies.

In addition, alignment and recalibration software has been installed Mystique Large Scale Experience which allows projectors to be align with all ease. “It is a very versatile and robust solution to automate the warping and blending processes by allowing with a single click Align, Calibrate and mix multiprojection matrices with great precision, In this case using three cameras ", Add the Bigvideo director.

The new planetarium projection system will turn the dome into a space full of alternatives, because in addition to please astronomy fans with immersive trips to galaxies, will allow to project audiovisual samples, Theatrical and musical, becoming a true immersive theater and an audiovisual experimentation laboratory.