Digitalis and the Pacific Planetarium: Learning Together

2025-02-27 / Karrie Berglund / Community Engagement

People who talk to Digitalis quickly realize that we know planetariums inside and out. In fact, all our Education team have actually worked in planetariums, and we have combined dome education experience of over 80 years—and counting.

Since 2011 Digitalis has operated the Pacific Planetarium out of our headquarters in Bremerton, Washington. The Pacific Planetarium is a 6.1m (20ft) diameter fiberglass dome with concentric bench seating for 26 people. It is powered by a cove-mounted Digitalis Æthos^® system that projects a 4k pixel diameter on the dome. A computer running Digitalis's Nightshade^® G3 Professional planetarium software simulates the universe on the inside of the dome.

Those who have been to other planetariums typically notice that the Pacific Planetarium dome is closer to head height than most. The room in which our dome is located only has 4.3m (14 ft) high ceilings. To fit in this room, the dome was mounted on a custom base that is just 1.1m (43 inches) above the floor. We designed our own low, ergonomic, curved benches and had them fabricated locally since there were no off the shelf options to fit our configuration. This low dome height results in a feeling of immersion in the Pacific Planetarium that is lacking in domes mounted high above the audience.

Currently we offer public shows twice per month, with interactive programs on different topics and of different lengths in order to reach as wide an audience as possible. In addition to interactive planetarium programs, we also have a small hands-on astronomy exhibits area. These exhibits are included free with Pacific Planetarium show tickets. When not being used for public shows, the Pacific Planetarium is used to test our hardware and do rigorous quality control checks of orders being shipped all over the world.

Both Digitalis and the community benefit from the Pacific Planetarium. Digitalis is able to test our software capabilities and user interfaces in a real world environment. We get immediate feedback from audiences on new software features, and that feedback helps define our development direction. We use shows as one way to test our software for bugs in the real world before we release an update to our customers.

We do interactive programs in the Pacific Planetarium, which means that the audience can ask questions throughout the show. During programs, our staff continually test the usability of our interfaces: Can we quickly and easily respond to audience questions? If not, we know what we need to work on.

The community benefits from easy access to the unique, shared immersive learning space of a planetarium. The closest public planetarium to Bremerton would otherwise be Seattle's Willard Smith Planetarium at Pacific Science Center, which is more than an hour's trip each way.

During our interactive programs, audience members are encouraged to answer questions as well as ask questions of the Pacific Planetarium teacher. Because all Pacific Planetarium programs are live, each show is tailored to a specific audience.

In a Yelp review from March, 2024, Merritt S. of San Francisco commented,

The presenter was super knowledgeable and clearly loves sharing their passion for astronomy with visitors. The showing we attended had about 10 young children in it who were fairly rowdy and asked tons of questions and constantly interrupted our presenter, but the presenter was a total champ and was amazing at answering them. Their knowledge of how to operate the actual planetarium's video system (the whole point of the planetarium) was great, and they even did an on-the-spot trip to the moon to look at a lunar eclipse from that view. Overall fantastic trip, and glad that I found this hidden gem.

Digitalis has always been different from other planetarium vendors, primarily due to our laser-sharp focus on education. The Pacific Planetarium is one more example of what sets us apart: Not only do we talk about teaching with a planetarium, we actually DO it.