This article needs additional citations for verification . (November 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) |
Established | 2003 |
---|---|
Dissolved | 2011 |
Location | Minneapolis, Minnesota |
Coordinates | 44°58′48″N93°16′12″W / 44.980134°N 93.270085°W |
Type | Planetarium |
Director | Angus Vaughan |
The Minnesota Planetarium Society (MNPS) was a Minnesota-based organization for the promotion of and education in astronomy. In September 2011, it was absorbed by the Bell Museum of Natural History and the society no longer exists. [1]
The Minnesota Planetarium operated from 1960 until it was closed in 2002. Government funding for a new planetarium was cancelled in 2011.
In 1889 the Minnesota Academy of Science was granted space in the Minneapolis Public Library for a science museum. When the Academy disbanded in 1929, the Library assumed responsibility for the science museum in a partnership that has evolved and endured for almost 80 years.
In 1960, the City of Minneapolis built a new central downtown library and, to honor its partnership with science, a planetarium was included within it, the only library outside of Alexandria, Egypt, to contain such a feature. 170,000 visitors came to see the night skies during the early years after opening. From 1974 to 1982, the Minneapolis Library had an agreement with the Science Museum of Minnesota to jointly run the planetarium. The Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library agreed to take over its funding and management in 1982. The Minneapolis Planetarium was shuttered when the central library was torn down in 2002 to make way for the new Cesar Pelli-designed facility that would be funded largely through a city referendum. Plans called for a new planetarium with surrounding exhibit space to be built as the library’s fifth and sixth floors. Financing for construction of this project was to come through bonds authorized by the State of Minnesota. From the opening to the closing of the old planetarium, over 4 million Minnesota visitors took advantaged of the facility and its star-shows programs. Even in its last years, with no new capital investment or equipment since its inception, no marketing and no formal school contracts, the planetarium had 70,000 visitors per year.
When the Minneapolis Central Library was torn down in 2002, the former planetarium was shuttered with the understanding that it would be rebuilt as part of the new library. In September 2011, the Planetarium Society merged with the University of Minnesota's Bell Museum of Natural History.
To provide programming to a state without a public planetarium, the Minnesota Planetarium Society in the fall of 2006 purchased a portable planetarium that could be set up in a school gymnasium or similar space. It provides presentations similar to those previously only displayed in large planetariums such as the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. The system utilizes Uniview software and was designed by Swedish academics at Linköping University and the company SCISS along with scientists at the American Museum of Natural History. The software uses digital images. Visitors can see representation of the sky not just as seen from the Earth but from space. The planetarium can project images of Earth as it would be seen from space. rs see Earth as never before, watching the changes on its surface from yesterday or from billions of years ago. This immersive imagery is projected into a GeoDome Theater using an OmniFocus fish-eye-lens, a system developed by The Elumenati. The Uniview software allows visualization from any point in time or space to put projected onto the dome.
The Minnesota Planetarium Society was the first organization to purchase the package. It named the dome “The ExploraDome” and the program it was to field “the ExploraDome Immersive Learning Program.”
A planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation.
The Adler Planetarium is a public museum dedicated to the study of astronomy and astrophysics. It was founded in 1930 by Chicago business leader Max Adler. It is located on the northeast tip of Northerly Island at the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois. The Adler was the first planetarium in the United States and is part of Chicago's Museum Campus, which includes the John G. Shedd Aquarium and The Field Museum. The Adler's mission is to inspire exploration and understanding of the universe.
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is a science and technology museum in Portland, Oregon, United States. It contains three auditoriums, including a large-screen theatre, planetarium, and exhibition halls with a variety of hands-on permanent exhibits focused on natural sciences, industry, and technology. Transient exhibits span a wider range of disciplines.
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, together with the adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and the Cowles Conservatory, it has an annual attendance of around 700,000 visitors. The museum's permanent collection includes over 13,000 modern and contemporary art pieces including books, costumes, drawings, media works, paintings, photography, prints, and sculpture.
The University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) is a public university in Duluth, Minnesota. It is part of the University of Minnesota system and offers 16 bachelor's degrees in 87 majors, graduate programs in 25 different fields, and a two-year program at the School of Medicine and a four-year College of Pharmacy program.
The Minneapolis Public Library (MPL) was a library system that served the residents of Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States. It was founded in 1885 with the establishment of the Minneapolis Library Board by an amendment to the Minneapolis City Charter. Lumber baron and philanthropist T. B. Walker and other city leaders such as Thomas Lowry were members of the first library board. In 2008, after some financial difficulties, the library was merged into the Hennepin County Library system. At the time of its merger, the library included Central Library in downtown Minneapolis and fourteen branch libraries. Its collection numbered about 3.1 million items with about 2.2 million of these housed in the central library.
The Fleet Science Center is a science museum and planetarium in Balboa Park, located in San Diego, California. It is at the east end of the El Prado Drive walkway, next to the Bea Evenson Fountain and plaza in central Balboa Park.
Telus World of Science (TWOS) is a broad-based science centre in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, operated by the (non-profit) Edmonton Space & Science Foundation. The centre is located on the southwest corner of Coronation Park in the neighborhood of Woodcroft. It is currently a member of both the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) and the Canadian Association of Science Centres (CASC).
The McLaughlin Planetarium is a former working planetarium whose building occupies a space immediately to the south of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, at 100 Queen's Park. Founded by a grant from philanthropist Colonel R. Samuel McLaughlin, the facility was opened to the public on October 26, 1968. It had, for its time, a state-of-the-art electro-mechanical Zeiss planetarium projector that was used to project regular themed shows about the stars, planets, and cosmology for visitors. By the 1980s the planetarium's sound-system and domed ceiling were used to display dazzling music-themed laser-light shows. The lower levels of the planetarium contained a gallery called the "Astrocentre" that featured space-related exhibits, related artifacts on the history of astronomy and was also home of the world's first commercial Stellarium
Telus Spark is a science museum with interactive exhibits, multimedia presentations and educational demonstrations in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. There are more than 430,000 visitors annually, including over 82,000 students.
The Houston Museum of Natural Science is a natural history museum located on the northern border of Hermann Park in Houston, Texas, United States. The museum was established in 1909 by the Houston Museum and Scientific Society, an organization whose goals were to provide a free institution for the people of Houston focusing on education and science. Museum attendance totals over two million visitors each year. The museum complex consists of a central facility with four floors of natural science halls and exhibits, the Burke Baker Planetarium, the Cockrell Butterfly Center, and the Wortham Giant Screen Theatre. The museum is one of the most popular in the United States and ranks just below New York City's American Museum of Natural History and Metropolitan Museum of Art and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco in most attendance amongst non-Smithsonian museums. Much of the museum's popularity is attributed to its large number of special or guest exhibits.
Explora is a science center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, located near Old Town Albuquerque. Its name is the imperative form of the Spanish language verb explorar, which means to explore.
Dynamic Earth is a not-for-profit visitor attraction and science centre in Edinburgh and is Scotland's largest interactive visitor attraction. It is located in the Holyrood area, beside the Scottish Parliament building and at the foot of Salisbury Crags. It is a registered charity under Scottish law and is owned as The Dynamic Earth Charitable Trust. The centre was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999.
The Rochester Museum & Science Center (RMSC) is a museum in Rochester, New York, dedicated to community education in science, technology and local history. The museum also operates the Strasenburgh Planetarium, located next to the museum, and the Cumming Nature Center, a 900-acre (3.6 km2) nature preserve near Naples, New York. The museum resides at 657 East Ave. and has a collection of 1.2 million artifacts.
The Bell Museum, formerly known as the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History, is located at the University of Minnesota. The museum's new location on the St. Paul campus opened July 13–15, 2018. The world-renowned Minnesota wildlife dioramas, numerous animal specimens from all over the world, and the 120-seat digital Whitney and Elizabeth MacMillan Planetarium theater are highlighted features of the new facility. The museum's former location in Minneapolis is closed as the work to move to the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus began in January 2017. The museum is part of the University's College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences.
The Museum of Arts and Sciences, often referred to as MOAS, is a museum in Daytona Beach, Florida, United States. The museum is a member of the American Alliance of Museums and an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. It is home to over 30,000 objects, making it one of the largest museums in central Florida.
Digital Universe Atlas is a free open source software planetarium application, available under the terms of the Illinois Open Source License, and running on Linux, Windows, macOS, AmigaOS 4, and IRIX.
Minneapolis Central Library, located at 300 Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, is the largest library of the Hennepin County Library public library system. It bills itself as having "the third largest per capita public library collection of any major city in America with a collection of more than 2.4 million items—including books, DVDs, music, government documents." The 353,000 square foot building with two levels of underground parking was designed by César Pelli and opened on May 20, 2006. It has over 300 free Internet computers for use by the public, an 8,140 square-foot atrium, an 18,560 square-foot "green" roof planted with low-growing ground cover designed to "be sun- and drought-resistant", and a host of energy-efficiency measures.
The Jesús Emilio Ramírez González Planetarium of Medellín is a planetarium located in Medellín, Colombia and established on October 10, 1984. It was originally conceived by the Astronomical Society of the College of San José, led at that time by Brother Daniel, a renowned scientist, astronomer, and botanist. The purpose is that the planetarium is a space for the promotion of scientific and technological culture of citizens and mentality that encourages scientific and technological creativity. The museum is surrounded by a public space known as the Park of Wishes, which was designed by Felipe Uribe de Bedout to coordinate with the planetarium.