University of Toronto Planetarium

The Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics has a planetarium that can seat up to 25 people. The dome is an inflatable structure made by The Elumenati.

Unlike more traditional planetariums that use an opto-mechanical projector, we use a digital projector to generate the images of sky. The digital projector gives us much greater freedom in what we can show. We have paired the digital projector with powerful software called Uniview. Uniview is based on NASA's Digital Universe, which is a three dimensional atlas of the universe.

Exploring the Sky

Just like traditional planetariums, we can stand anywhere on the Earth and look up at the sky. This is as excellent opportunity to learn about the constellations, see how the planets move through the sky, understand the phases of the Moon or find out what the night sky looks like in Australia, all without having to worry about bad weather. We are not limited to looking at the sky from Earth; we can travel to any planet or moon in the solar system and look at the sky from there. For example we can sit at the Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon and look back at the Earth.

Exploring the Solar System

Uniview has a model solar system built in to it. We can fly around the solar system and orbit around other planets. We can expore the large systems of moons around Jupiter and Saturn. Explore geological formations on Earth, Mars and the Moon. Follow the paths of early Solar system explorers like the pionier and voyager spacecraft. Explore 3D models of the modern spacecraft such as Cassini and the International Space Station.

Exploring the Universe

Leave the Solar system behind and move out into the stars. Uniview has a database of thousands of stars, so you can see them fly by as you fly around our region of the galaxy. You can see stuning images of objects like nebulae, star clusters and galaxies. You can sit out side the galaxy and look back at a volumetric model of what the Milky Way looks like. You can zoom out