ann13002 — Announcement

New Planetarium Show by ESO Photo Ambassador Serge Brunier

26 November 2013

A photo project, developed by ESO Photo Ambassador, Serge Brunier, with ESO in 2009, has given birth to a new 360-degree fulldome planetarium show produced by Point Du Jour/TOTAVISION Le Plus–Communauté Urbaine de Dunkerque/RSA Cosmos. The show called Le Navigateur du Ciel (The Navigator of Outer Space), is 30 minutes long and is available in French and English.

In recognition of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, ESO commissioned the famous French astrophotographer Serge Brunier to take on the challenging task of creating a photo of the entire sky as seen from both the southern and the northern hemispheres. The resulting photo has almost 1 billion pixels and is one of the best and most natural all-sky images taken so far. To accomplish such a stunning feat, Serge Brunier had to travel to the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert, crossing it from south to north, and to the Pic du Midi in the French Pyrenees. This journey across the hemispheres is the impulse behind the voyage through the Universe in the new planetarium show, Le Navigateur du Ciel.

Writers Serge Brunier and Bruno Bucher take the spectators on a journey that initially observes the Universe with just the naked eye, then through the lens of a photographer and finally zooms into regions of the sky with the powerful telescopes that professional astronomers use, discovering the faintest traces of the immense objects and structures that make up the cosmos, distant in both time and space.

The movie was filmed using novel technology consisting of 11 HD cameras, developed by Totavision in collaboration with Point du Jour and Planevision. With the help of this new method, live video footage can be projected onto the planetarium dome in higher quality than Ultra HD. The movie was co-produced by RSA Cosmos, with the support of P.L.U.S. Communauté Urbaine de Dunkerque and Cité des sciences, Paris.

The movie trailer can be watched here, while the English version can be viewed here.

Contacts

Lars Lindberg Christensen
Head, ESO education and Public Outreach Department
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6761
Cell: +49 173 3872 621
Email: lars@eso.org

Maud Guenoux
Point du Jour
Tel: +33 1 75 44 80 89
Email: m.guenoux@pointdujour.fr

Oana Sandu
Community Coordinator
ESO education and Public Outreach Department
Tel: +49 89 320 069 65
Email: osandu@partner.eso.org

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