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2025 Jan 31. Explore a Universe of Data with OpenSpace led by Micah Acinapura and Alex Bock. OpenSpace is free and open-source software using state-of-the-art visualization techniques to create stunning, interactive tours of space and Earth. Whether you’re exploring distant planets or the latest scientific discoveries, OpenSpace offers an immersive experience compatible with planetarium domes, theaters, flat screens, touch tables, and is currently used by over 80 institutions around the globe.
Video: LINK
OpenSpace: https://www.openspaceproject.com/
Email: mvilla@amnh.org or macinapura@amnh.org
You can find additional OpenSpace links in the chat discussion below.
To see a description and schedule of upcoming Planetarians' Zoom Seminars, visit
https://www.ppadomes.org/events/online-seminars/pzs-schedule
Below:
Below:
Attendees
Chat
Attendees
Attendees
Rosemary Walling, Marie Drake Planetarium, Juneau, AK
Alan Gould, Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley, California USA
Micah Acinapura, Hayden Planetarium/OpenSpace NYC
Alex Bock, Linköping University & Visualization Center C, Norrköping, Sweden
Alan Gould, Lawerence Hall of Science Planetarium, University of California, Berkeley
Megan Villa: Megan Villa, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY
Andrew Buckingham, Auckland, New Zealand
Andrea Wieck, Germany, operating a mobile Planetarium there.
Jeff Nee, Pasadena, CA
Justin Stevick, College of San Mateo. California
Cal Powell, Alexandria, VA
Tony Smith, Pullman, WA
Liam Forbes, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Waylena McCully, Champaign IL
Guilherme Frederico Marranghello: Planetário da Unipampa, Bagé-Brazil
Greg Anderson, Cosmic Adventures Traveling Planetarium, Frederick, MD
Dave Eagle. star-gazing.co.uk Mobile planetarium operator based in the UK.
Dário Fonseca - Hemispherium @ Exploratório in Coimbra, Portugal
Liz Klimek, Columbia, SC
Amy Barraclough - Edelman Planetarium, Glassboro, NJ
Dhyana from Marseille planetarium, France
Jon Elvert, Richmond, Virginia
M. Josh Roberts, currently domeless
Kyle Doane, Nomad Domes, Seattle. WA
Chat
Chat
00:41:33 Andreas ("mobile planetarium Wieck", Germany): Dear Micah,
[ Alex answered briefly before the recording started. Additional information followed later during the seminar or in the chat. ]
Is OpenSpace suitable for normal daily use in mobile planetariums with fisheye-projector?
[ Yes ]
Can it replace Shira Player or Shira universe or similar Softwares?
[ No ]
Is it suitable for easily:
- showing stars, constellations and planets just seen from earth?
- in/decrease earth-rotation-time?
- switch the viewers' location between north pole, equator and south pole by just pressing 2 buttons?
[ Yes ]
- let different video clips play from within the SW without having to quit it or switch my
[ No ]
- let different audio clips play in addition to showing constellations?
[ Yes ]
- showing flat movies on a planetarium dome’s surface?
[ Yes ]
Thank you very much! - Andreas
00:51:57 Jeff Nee: Portmanteaus - totally acceptable
Waylena McCully (she/her): Reacted to "Portmanteaus - total..." with ❤️
Dhyana @France Marseille: Reacted to "Portmanteaus - total..." with 👍
Dave Eagle: Reacted to "Portmanteaus - total..." with 👍🏻01:03:22 Alex Bock (he/him): Reacted to "Portmanteaus - total..." with 👍
Alex Bock (he/him): Reacted to "Portmanteaus - total..." with 👍
Alex Bock (he/him): Replying to "Portmanteaus - total..." totes adorable
00:52:45 Greg: are we supposed to be able to see Alex's screen?
00:52:57 Micah Acinapura (OpenSpace): yes he is sharing slides
Jeff Nee: Reacted to "are we supposed to b..." with 👍
00:53:09 Jeff Nee: I can see them okay.
Megan Villa: Reacted to "I can see them okay." with 👍
Micah Acinapura (OpenSpace): Reacted to "I can see them okay." with 👍
00:55:13 Megan Villa: The site Alex is trying to show: https://status.openspaceproject.com/usage/
00:56:15 Megan Villa: OpenSpace Slack workspace: https://join.slack.com/t/openspacesupport/shared_invite/zt-24uhn3wvo-gCGHgjg2m9tHzKUEb_FyMQ
01:04:28 Tony Smith, ASP: Washington represent!
Guy Worthey: Reacted to "Washington represent..." with 😁
Jeff Nee: Reacted to "Washington represent..." with 😁
01:12:11 Guy Worthey: 🤯
01:13:11 Dave Eagle: Can you focus on or goto objects outside our solar system?
01:15:18 Dave Eagle: So we cannot, say, go to Betelgeuse and see what the view looks like from there?
01:15:59 Dave Eagle: OK
01:17:21 Justin Stevick: How accurate are the colors for the stars?
01:17:56 Alex Bock (he/him): The stars are using a lookup table using a combination of the B and V magnitude from the Hipparcos datasets
01:18:05 Justin Stevick: great!
01:18:21 Alex Bock (he/him): and should be pretty accurate according to Carter Emmart and Brian Abbott, the Vis and Astro experts from AMNH
01:24:46 Dhyana @France Marseille: Micah, are there any tech issues to consider if you run Open Space on a laptop ? What kind of specs would you need if you wanted to run Open Space on the same computer that your default sky software?
01:25:44 Megan Villa: OpenSpace minimum requirements: https://docs.openspaceproject.com/latest/getting-started/install/index.html
Dhyana @France Marseille: Reacted to "OpenSpace minimum re..." with 👍
01:27:45 Alex Bock (he/him): Replying to "Micah, are there any..."
Feel free to reach out on our email support@openspaceproject.com or (even better) on the Slack and we can talk more as well
01:27:22 Dave Eagle: I noticed that the planet only rotates in the view when you zoom out quite a bit. Can you stop the planet rotation being locked when zoomed in closer?
Alex Bock (he/him): Yes, there is a setting that you can change. By default, it is set to be 5x the Earth radius where it "captures" the camera and makes it corotate
Dave Eagle: Replying to "Yes, there is a sett..." Where is this setting?
Alex Bock (he/him): Replying to "Yes, there is a sett..." It's in Settings / Navigation Handler / Orbital Navigator / Follow Anchor Node Rotation Distance. It should say 5 in your case and you can set it to anything, including 0 if you never want it to happen
Dave Eagle: Replying to "Yes, there is a sett..." Thank you. That worked. 😀
Megan Villa: Reacted to "Thank you. That work..." with 👍
Alex Bock (he/him): Replying to "Yes, there is a sett..." Awesome!
01:30:49 Dhyana @France Marseille: Will it be troublesome to have Open Space and your default sky software installed in the same computer, and switch between the two ?
01:32:33 Dhyana @France Marseille: Thanks Micah ! great idea Jeff !
01:32:33 Alex Bock (he/him): One other general rule of OpenSpace is: Feel free to try out any setting; we never save anything by default, so if something goes wrong, you can always restart and undo any bad changes
01:38:35 Megan Villa: More details on navigation in OpenSpace: https://docs.openspaceproject.com/latest/getting-started/navigation/index.html
01:39:58 Jeff Nee: As someone with unsteady hands, I just program JavaScript buttons to fly to different waypoints. I always make myself sick when flying live. Here's an example buttonset I made a while ago:
Megan Villa: Reacted to "As someone with unst..." with ❤️
01:40:33 Alex Bock (he/him): There was some question earlier about mobile planetariums as well; just to fill that in. OpenSpace can also natively render into fisheye projectors and optionally have a second screen that would show the user interface to you
01:41:45 Andreas ("mobile planetarium Wieck", Germany): OH - Excellent! :-))
01:42:09 Dave Eagle: I have also managed to produce some amazing spherical mirror
Alex Bock (he/him): Reacted to "I have also managed ..." with 👍
Megan Villa: Reacted to "I have also managed ..." with 👍
01:42:34 Alex Bock (he/him): And Jeff mentioned Equirectangular videos that work for fulldome, but also YouTube 360 videos
Jeff Nee: Reacted to "And Jeff mentioned E..." with 👆
Waylena McCully (she/her): Reacted to "And Jeff mentioned E..." with 👆
01:45:52 Alex Bock (he/him): To Alex Bock: What does mean you wrote: "OpenSpace can also "natively render into fisheye projectors"? What I meant is the example that Micah just showed right now. You can select a fishye rendering and move the rendering window over to your fisheye projector. If you do that often, we can help to set up a configuration file where it all sets itself up automatically
01:46:41 Alex Bock (he/him): So saying: Window 1 with Fisheye should be at position x and y with resolution 1 and 2. Window 2 with the UI should by at x' and y' with different resolutions, etc. To suit how you have setup your system
01:44:02 Dhyana @France Marseille: Hey guys, something not tech related : Do you plan to stream any part of the NY gathering announced at the start, for people internationally ? I know scheduling is complicated with Time Zones and all, but how could we take part, from Europe for exemple ?
Megan Villa: Replying to "hey guys, something ..." We aren’t currently planning a virtual option, but we’re still working out the details.
01:47:17 Waylena McCully (she/her): Great presentation! Thank you all!
Alex Bock (he/him): Reacted to "Great presentation! ..." with 👏
Dhyana @France Marseille: Reacted to "Great presentation! ..." with 🌟
Jeff Nee: Reacted to "Great presentation! ..." with 👏
01:48:10 Megan Villa: We hope you all explore OpenSpace! You can download from our website: https://www.openspaceproject.com/
01:49:51 Dave Eagle: Thank you very much.
01:49:20 Andreas ("mobile planetarium Wieck", Germany): How is OpenSpace financed?
Alex Bock (he/him): We are getting funding from a variety of funding sources that are a mixture of visualization research funding and public outreach:
Megan Villa: Replying to "How is OpenSpace fin..." We’re funded through several grants from NASA, Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), and the Swedish e-Science Research Centre.
01:51:02 Megan Villa: Reacted to "{2A93D520-FFA3-4FE6-9878-BDCB31922F0C}.png" with 👍
01:51:22 Andreas ("mobile planetarium Wieck", Germany): Great! Thank you very much for very interesting presentation and answering to Questions, even in German (Alex)
Alex Bock (he/him): Reacted to "Great! Thank you ver..." with 👋
01:51:49 Dário Fonseca: Can position/camera angle movements be scripted?
01:52:31 Alex Bock (he/him): Yes, almost everything is scriptable in OpenSpace. Here are the functions for the navigation: https://docs.openspaceproject.com/releases-v0.20/generated/scripting-api/openspace.navigation.html
01:53:13 Dário Fonseca: thanks.
01:52:35 Alex Bock (he/him): Josh!
Reacted to Josh! with "👋"
01:53:40 Josh: Hi Alex! Hi Micah!
01:56:12 Josh: "oh God... Speed of light is SO SLOW." -Micah
Alex Bock (he/him): Reacted to ""oh God... Speed of ..." with 😂
Jeff Nee: Reacted to ""oh God... Speed of ..." with 😂
Megan Villa: Reacted to ""oh God... Speed of ..." with 😂
Dhyana @France Marseille: Reacted to ""oh God... Speed of ..." with 🥇
02:07:44 Andrew @ Astronz: Thanks all. Great to see.
Megan Villa: Reacted to "Thanks all. Great to..." with 👋
02:12:03 Andreas ("mobile planetarium Wieck", Germany): Very interesting, Micah! That old style Planetarium showing is what I need
02:12:39 Andreas ("mobile planetarium Wieck", Germany): Do you have Special separate instruction Manual for it?
Megan Villa: Replying to "Do you have Special ..." We don’t have special instructions for night sky. But stay on the lookout for an upcoming webinar just on night sky astronomy in OpenSpace!
02:12:48 Cosmic Kyle Nomad Domes: If you are landed, could we add a photographic panoramic image?
Cosmic Kyle Nomad Domes: Replying to "Do you have Special ..." I have a few that I would be happy to donate
Megan Villa: Reacted to "I have a few that I ..." with 👍
Andreas ("mobile planetarium Wieck", Germany): Replying to "Do you have Special ..." Can we connect?
Cosmic Kyle Nomad Domes: Replying to "Do you have Special ..." @Andreas ("mobile planetarium Wieck", Germany) kyle@nomaddomes.com
Andreas ("mobile planetarium Wieck", Germany): Replying to "Do you have Special ..." Thank you!
Andreas ("mobile planetarium Wieck", Germany): Replying to "Do you have Special ..."
really !!
02:13:22 Jeff Nee:
02:14:32 Andreas ("mobile planetarium Wieck", Germany): thankyou Jeff for Link!
02:15:07 Jeff Nee: Oh, I should mention that I programmed those under an older version of OpenSpace, so hopefully not too much has broken since I programmed them.
02:13:49 Dhyana @France Marseille: Can we see drawings of objects orbits, Venus for exemple, to show the shapes they form over time ? (flower-like, spirals…) how about the movements of the Solar System altogether ?
02:17:09 Justin Stevick: Thank you all! Great presentation! Gotta run!
02:20:29 Josh: I wanna beta test!
02:20:51 Greg: Wow, mind blown! Thank you Alex, Micah, and Megan.
02:21:06 Josh: Thanks a ton, really cool to see OS growing and changing!
02:21:19 Megan Villa:
Download OpenSpace: https://www.openspaceproject.com/
Email: mvilla@amnh.org or macinapura@amnh.org
02:22:08 Tony Smith, ASP: Thanks all! So cool to see so many functions demonstrated
02:22:33 Dário Fonseca: Thank you!
02:23:00 Jack Dunn: Thank you!
02:24:29 Dhyana @France Marseille: Very last-minute question popped up, if anyone can answer ? How can we join the Tuesday monthly meeting?
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