The modern, digital, networked planetarium is a powerful collaborative visualization environment. These facilities have the potential to both elevate the level of public science communication and serve as a data exploration tool for researchers. The International Planetarium Society’s Data to Dome initiative is working prepare the planetarium community for this new dual role in the era of Gaia, LSST and SKA. This talk will argue that the planetarium is an exceptionally effective environment for exploring large and spatially complex datasets.