The Planetarium of Bogotá renews its projection system with Christie

The new infrastructure of the astronomical enclosure of Bogotá includes two Griffyn 4K32-RGB projectors, managed by Pandoras Box 8 and Mystique with support from professional services Christie.

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

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

after 52 years using opto-mechanical projection systems in your dome, with the capacity to 376 people, the planetarium was looking for a technological leap that would allow its audience to live immersive 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 planetarium productions come in that resolution., but we also wanted an environmentally friendly solution that didn't use lamps, that had a greater durability of the lighting source and that was more energy efficient, as is the case with the Griffyn. The equipment also offers us more vivid colors, better contrast and high light output (34.000 Lumens) to cover our dome of 23 metre, tripling the luminosity of our previous system", Remember Carlos Molina, coordinator of the Planetarium of Bogotá, which is under the orbit of the District Institute of the Arts (Idartes) of the Mayor's Office of the Colombian capital.

Joaquin Gutierrez, director of Bigvideo, one of the companies that won the public tender for the supply and integration of the project in partnership with the companies Merge and AV Design, says the Griffyn "was the perfect choice for its versatility., state-of-the-art technology, light power, resolution, size, weight and price, in addition to its ability to upgrade to 3D in the future".

The two Griffyn of the planetarium 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 a suitable 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 the control of the projection two Pandoras Box 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 dual signal 4K to 60 Hz of the Digistar 7, the astronomical software of Evans & Sutherland that was acquired for the project", clarifies Joaquín Gutiérrez.

In addition, the alignment and recalibration software has been installed Mystique Large Scale Experience that allows projectors to be aligned with ease. "This is a very versatile and robust solution to automate warping and blending processes by allowing a single click to align, calibrate and mix multi-projection matrices with high precision, in this case using three cameras", adds the director of Bigvideo.

The new projection system of the planetarium will turn the dome into a space full of alternatives, in addition to pleasing astronomy enthusiasts with immersive trips to galaxies, will allow to project audiovisual samples, theatrical and musical, becoming a true immersive theatre and a laboratory of audiovisual experimentation.

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