Just in time for the holidays, Augustana College has a new perspective on the night sky. The campus' John Deere Planetarium just underwent a $150,000 upgrade, complete with new seats, a surround sound system, multi-color lighting, and a digital projector.
The renovated planetarium will now be able to offer "full dome shows," led by Director Doctor Lee Carkner.
"We had been using our original 1969 projector," said Dr. Carkner. "That's an optical mechanical projector where it had little dots of lights that were used to simulate the sky. This is a big jump forward in technology that we have here."
The digital projector means the planetarium will be able to show a wide range of new content that the old system couldn't. The new projector also will require less maintenance and is less complicated.
The first show in the Augustana planetarium is "Seasons of Light". That explains how our holiday traditions are related to the seasons and winter constellations. The show continues through Friday.