Rice helps provide Ethiopia’s first planetarium

CONTACT: Jade Boyd
PHONE: 713-348-6778
E-MAIL: jadeboyd@rice.edu

Thanks to Rice University, the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS), NASA and portable planetarium company e-Planetarium, Ethiopia recently became only the fourth country in Africa with a digital planetarium capable of showing full-dome movies.

The National Museum of Ethiopia, located in Addis Ababa, received its own Discovery Dome in November. Discovery Dome is a portable planetarium developed in 2003 at Rice and HMNS under a grant from NASA’s Immersive Earth program. While full-sized planetariums require many projectors and computers to show fully immersive programs, Discovery Domes use an inflatable dome and single-projector display to take immersive shows on the road, making them available to thousands who don’t have access to full-sized planetariums.

The Discovery Dome donation to Ethiopia coincided with HMNS’s exhibit of the fossilized bones of Lucy, an Ethiopian hominid believed to be one of mankind’s earliest ancestors. The HMNS-produced program “Lucy’s Cradle: Birth of Wonder” was included with the donated planetarium, and museum officials in Addis Ababa plan to use the portable dome to show this program and others to schoolchildren throughout the country. A star projection program and nine other HMNS- and Rice-produced programs were also included with the donation, and Ethiopian officials plan to create a special facility for the dome at their museum..

“HMNS has developed a close relationship with the Ethiopian government and its National Museum,” said Carolyn Sumners, HMNS vice president for astronomy. “Returning ‘Lucy’s Cradle’ to the home of Lucy is a wonderful opportunity. Over the years, research has shown that visiting museums and planetariums correlates well with student achievement in science and mathematics. It is important to bring the planetarium experience to more countries in Africa.”

Patricia Reiff, Rice physicist and e-Planetarium president, said, “Ethiopia’s Discovery Dome is the first digital theater available in Central and Eastern Africa, and we invited hundreds of teachers across the country to a training session when we delivered the dome in Addis Ababa. The planetarium will allow thousands of schoolchildren across Ethiopia to learn about their country’s most famous ancestor and about the forces that shape our planet and solar system.”

Reiff formed e-Planetarium in 2004 as a way to market shows, software and planetarium technology created via NASA’s Immersive Earth project. Immersive Earth is a partnership among the Rice Space Institute (RSI), HMNS, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, HomeRun Pictures, Avela Corp., Elumenati and Sky-Skan Inc.

“Our planetarium shows are truly immersive because they present the viewer with images in front, behind, above and on both sides of their seat,” said Reiff, who also serves as the director of RSI and as the Principal Investigator on the Immersive Earth Cooperative Agreement. “The NASA program was designed to provide seed money for products that are financially self-sustaining, and the e-Planetarium spinoff company allows us to bring these products to the learners of Houston and the world.”

Sumners, a co-PI on the project, said, “More than 60,000 students in the Houston area experienced the Discovery Dome in their schools in 2006 and 2007 through rentals from the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and many more viewers around the world are experiencing the domes through our growing network of international partners.”

Sumners said the network now includes 38 sites in 15 states and 11 countries, with installations going in now in Mexico and Turkey. A map of Discovery Dome partners can be found at http://www.discoverydome.com.

Shows produced under the Immersive Earth grant include: “Earth’s Wild Ride,” “Dinosaur Prophecy,” “Night of the Titanic” and the upcoming “Asteroid!” Discovery Domes can also present virtually any show produced for a full-dome planetarium, including HMNS productions like “Lucy’s Cradle,” “It’s About Time,” “Microcosm,” “Future Moon” and “Amazing Astronomers of Antiquity.”