Rome’s Planetarium to return after 7 years of absence

During this long break, it has been meticulously upgraded

On 28 September, the municipal website of Rome brought some long-awaited news with the announcement that the city Planetarium was set to reopen early in 2022, after seven years of renovations.

The Planetarium is located at the Museum of Roman Civilization

The authorities promise that the long wait will have been worthwhile announcing that there will be a new database that can be updated in real time and immersive experiences for audiences of all ages. The digital transformation will be a way to invite curious and passionate people to discover new ways of looking at the Universe.

The cornerstone of the interventions, which have affected the structure in recent years and, in part, are still in progress, is the instrumentation. The old optical projector supported by a single digital channel projected on windows will give way to cutting-edge software. The new digital planetarium, with an articulated system of very high contrast video projectors, with 4K resolution, will be able to reconstruct the surface of Earth, Moon and Mars with extreme realism.

It will also be able to reach further, into the most distant places in the universe, between galaxies and nebulae. Furthermore, the possibility of storing a large amount of data and making updates in real time, based on astronomical news, will make it possible to follow the discoveries of the scientific community.

Information and knowledge will not be the subject of lectures or conferences, but in the characteristic style of the Planetarium it will be the highlight of captivating astronomical shows. Realism and immersion, also through an ad hoc audio system, are the keys to the project, conceived to offer the public the opportunity to interact with the "night sky", and become the protagonist of the scene.

The interaction will not be just between Planetarium astronomers and visitors. The software will also allow dialogue with an international community of planetariums by sharing, sometimes live, or via the cloud, the results of research and studies, as well as shows, storytelling methods, creative solutions at the service of scientific dissemination. 

The peculiarity of the Rome Planetarium is, in fact, the interdisciplinary language created over the years by the scientific staff. The new software will not change approach and philosophy, but will allow the promotion of cutting-edge cultural and scientific programming, through a game of immersive suggestions, the interaction between different fields, and experimentations.

The reopening of the Planetarium will also mark the resumption of activities and events, focused on the transversality of fields: from astronomy to history, and from geology to art.