Recent software updates and renovations to SUNY Oswego’s Shineman Planetarium have provided expanded technology, ease-of-use and additional learning opportunities for students in the university’s astronomy minor.
Planetarium shows, which are free and open to the public, take place at 6 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays during semesters. With the increase in interest in astronomy topics in advance of the eclipse, including on-campus planetarium shows on the day of totality on April 8, the timing worked well.
Natalia Lewandowska, the planetarium’s director and assistant professor of physics at SUNY Oswego, said that the upgrade process began more than a year ago, and started with learning about the limitations of Starry Night, the then-current software used by the planetarium.
“I went with the late Dr. [Scott] Roby [the previous planetarium director] to a workshop in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where the company from which we had bought software in the past, Spitz Inc., is based,” Lewandowska said.
At that workshop, Lewandowska learned that the acquisition of Spitz Inc., which created Starry Night, by another planetarium company, Cosm, meant that the platform would no longer be supported, replaced by an updated planetarium software system Digistar.
Thanks to a grant from the Shineman Endowed Fund, the planetarium upgrades include the software itself, computers to run the program and updated Windows iterations for each new computer.
“The whole planetarium is basically working on two computers; both these computers were completely exchanged, and the new software, Digistar 7, was delivered with these,” Lewandowska said.
“We had a colleague here from Spitz Inc. here for about a week in August, and during that time he took out all of the old components, put the new stuff in, and then he checked all of the software to see if it was working,” Lewandowska said. “On Friday morning, he gave me the opportunity to test it and play with it.”
