If you happened to catch the local North East news on Tuesday evening you may have seen a feature on the opening of the new Planetarium in Newcastle’s Centre for Life, the largest of its kind in the North. Well, Charlotte and I were there.

Actually, it’s not so much a new planetarium, I know, because we’ve been too it before! But it has been enlarged and the projection system upgraded. Before the grand opening we were treated to an excellent lecture on the origins and nature of the universe by one of the country’s leading cosmologists, Professor Carlos Frenk. I know it was good because I enjoyed it and learned a few things, and because it made my head hurt. Hard science always has the tendency to make my head hurt.

After the lecture we got to spend some time in the centre’s exhibition space playing with the dinosaurs while enjoying some specially commissioned ‘space’ cocktails – they made my head feel light and fluffy – before the opening of the planetarium itself and a thirty minute compilation of some of the centre’s best planetarium shows, one of which was in 3D. That made my eyes hurt, but it was very impressive none the less. There’s nothing quite like the experience, it’s so much more than what you can ever get at a cinema or anywhere else because it’s a total immersion experience. The new planetarium is a dome 10 meters in diameter which provides a full 180 degree immersion experience. The 3D animation sequences made me feel like a goddess in my chair, floating through my creation to admire it and the visual experience is complimented by an equally impressive sound system powerful enough to make your chair shake and vibrate at all the right places.

The planetarium show didn’t make my head hurt, or go light and fluffy, but it did make my legs wobbly.

http://star-www.dur.ac.uk/~csf/

http://www.life.org.uk/life-science-centre/news/life-news-press-enquiries/astronomy-expert-launches-regions-largest-planetarium