For Planetariums and Science Centres
Free Material
ESO Supernova is the world's first open source planetarium and likes to share. The material that ESO develops for ESO Supernova is available to other planetariums, who can freely download it and use it under a Creative Commons free license:
ESO Supernova material, images and videos, along with the texts of press releases, announcements and photo captions, are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Attribution or NoDerivatives licenses and may, on a non-exclusive basis, be reproduced without fee provided they are clearly and visibly credited. For more details and a list of Q&A on licensing please visit this page.
Don’t forget that your shop can earn up to 80% profit from reselling ESO products when placing wholesale bulk orders with us. See last page in the ESOshop Catalogue.
We can also offer to add your planetarium to our media list and receive our ESO press releases 24 to 48 hours in advance of their public release — with full access to the full press release text and associated multimedia. Sign up here.
Material for science centres
Planetarium material
- Christensen, L. et al., 2016, The Data2Dome Project — A consolidated, data-driven content distribution system, The Planetarian (DRAFT)
- Rößner, M., Christensen, L.L. & Ganter, C., 2016, Characterizing Fulldome Planetarium Projection Systems — The Limitations Imposed by Physics, and Suggestions on How to Mitigate, for IEEE (Paper I); (DRAFT)
- Christensen, L., 2016, Characterizing Fulldome Planetarium Projection Systems II, The Planetarian (DRAFT)
- The Astronomy Visualization Metadata (AVM) standard. IPS 2016 talk
If you don't want to miss any of our Fulldome videos, we recommend to subscribe to our Fulldome RSS feeds:
Planetarium shows
Important: before downloading large fulldome files, please read the advice on this page
| Show | Summary | Produced by | Length |
| From Earth to the Universe v2 | ESO is extremely proud to present an improved and updated version of the full-length show directed by Theofanis Matsopoulos. It takes the viewer on a journey of celestial discovery, from the early theories of the ancient Greek astronomers to a look at today’s most impressive telescopes. Version 2 features: improved image quality; higher resolution star maps; new video footage of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) courtesy of the fulldome expedition; a new 3D model of the Milky Way and much more! | ESO, Theofanis N. Matsopoulos | 31m40s |
| The Hot and Energetic Universe | This full-length show, directed by Theofanis Matsopoulos, delves into the natural phenomena related to high energy astrophysics, a key field of research in astronomy. | AHEAD | 29m38s |
| Europe to the Stars | This show takes the viewer on an epic journey behind the scenes at the most productive ground-based observatory in the world, revealing the science, the history, the technology and the people. | ESO | 31m22s |
| The Sun, Our Living Star | Discover the secrets of our star in this planetarium show and experience never-before-seen images of the Sun’s violent surface in immersive fulldome format. | ESO, Theofanis N. Matsopoulos | 24m43s |
| Two Small Pieces of Glass | The show follows two students as they interact with a female astronomer at a local star party. Along the way, the students learn the history of the telescope from Galileo’s modifications to a child’s spyglass — using two small pieces of glass — to the launch of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the future of astronomy. |
Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawai'i, Interstellar Studios, Carnegie Science Center |
22m45s |
| Dark: The Movie | The show explains and explores the nature of Dark Matter, the invisible 80% of the mass of the Universe. | iVEC, Scitech, iVEC@UWA, Peter Morse | 20m00s |
| Sunstruck | The show explores how the Sun came to support life on Earth, how it threatens life as we know it, and how its energy will one day fade away. | NASA, Michigan Science Center | 20m58s |
| The Dark Matter Mystery | The show addresses the question of what holds the universe together. What, in fact, are the constituents of the so-called Dark Matter? | Laupheim Planetarium | 38m30s |
| Distant Worlds - Alien Life? (Originally “Ferne Welten - fremdes Leben?”) | The night sky is effectively a view of infinity; could alien life exist out there somewhere? This film investigates the conditions required for life, beginning with planets and moons in our Solar System and venturing out to some of the newly-discovered exoplanets orbiting other stars. Potentially habitable exoplanets are now being discovered regularly - worlds that are not only very far away, but also strange and unfamiliar. What could life on these worlds look like? What are the chances of encountering intelligent life in the future and how might we detect it? | Planetariums Münster, Bochum, Kiel, Mannheim, Osnabrück & Wolfsburg | 52m30s |
| Sentient | An artistic work by students of the Art and Science Immersive Media class in the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) department at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. This is an immersive experience which investigates the creative, perceptive, and unexplored mind. | Massachusetts College of Art and Design | 34m23s |
| The Unknown Between | An artistic work by students of the Art and Science Immersive Media class in the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) department at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. This is an immersive experience which explores the moment between wakefulness and sleep. | Massachusetts College of Art and Design | 22m56s |
| Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015, 2016, and 2017 | Each year the Royal Observatory Greenwich creates a short planetarium presentation to show off some of the winners from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. In 2015 entries from 59 different countries around the world have made the competition bigger than ever, with the images covering everything from spellbinding aurorae to beautifully intricate galaxies millions of light-years distant. | Royal Observatory Greenwich | 14m15s, 27m08s, 05m20s |
| Phantom of the Universe | From the journey of protons racing through the world’s largest particle collider in Europe to up-close views of the Big Bang and emergent cosmos, Phantom of the Universe is a new fulldome planetarium show designed to immerse audiences in the search for dark matter. | Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, University of Texas at Arlington, Michigan State University, IFIC at University of Valencia | 27m29s |
| Seeing | The show follows the journey of a single photon as it is produced in a distant star, before travelling across the vast expanse of space to land on someone's retina. | ZEISS, Koenig Films, Mirage 3D | 26m35s |
| Out There: The Quest for Extrasolar Worlds | It shows how our perception of our place in the Universe has changed and how the discoveries of exoplanets we made in the last decades even surpassed the dreams of science fiction authors. | The Swiss Museum of Transport Planetarium, NCCR PlanetS, ESO | 30m27s |
| Uncharted Domain - MassArt College 2017 | This mesmerizing fulldome video is the final work by students of the Art and Science Immersive Media class in the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) department at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, produced during the 2017 Spring semester. | Massachusetts College of Art and Design | 29m07s |
| Einstein's Gravity Playlist | Join Lucia, a PhD student in physics, on an exploration of how gravitational waves are formed, how they move through the universe, and how scientists like her work to hear them. | Montana State University | 22m41s |