We delivered “ORPHEUS HYBRID” to Minato Science Museum (Tokyo) and Yonago City Children Culture Center (Tottori Prefecture) this spring. The system is a hybrid planetarium that combines “ORPHEUS” which is the first optical planetarium in the world to mount all 88 constellations with “VIRTUARIUM X”, an fulldome digital projection system that projects images seamlessly.

Minato Science Museum

The Minato Science Museum is a new facility that was born this spring in Toranomon, Tokyo, with the concept of "discovery and exploration of science that breathes in the city."
After implementing the proposal, we were selected as the best supplier with abundant experience and expertise in planetarium manufacturing and show production, and able to make the most advanced proposals for both hardware and software. “ORPHEUS HYBRID” in 15m horizontal dome with 121 seats was delivered.

Minato Science Museum

Yonago City Children Culture Center

The Yonago City Children Culture Center was established in 1983. Our "GX-AT" was installed in 12m horizontal dome. The planetarium had a good reputation for live star talks and had been popular with Yonago citizens and many astronomical fans. But more than 35 years have passed since its installation and this renewal has come. Yonago City decided to not only update the equipment to the latest version, but also inherit and enhance the projection style so that the planetarium can be used by a wide range of generations. Based on such management policy, our "Hybrid Planetarium" was highly evaluated and "ORPHEUS HYBRID” in 12m horizontal dome with 85 seats was delivered.

Yonago City Children Culture Center

ORPHEUS HYBRID Details

The new ORPHEUS planetarium projector is truly the "star of the show." It is much smaller than the former projectors, projecting 9,500 stars from a starball only 48cm (19") in diameter. 299 of these stars show the correct color temperature to give new realism to the sky. The sun, moon, and planets are also projected from the main body, with literally all projections illuminated by long-life LEDs. The Milky Way of the ORPHEUS is made up of 8 million micro-stars, showing beautiful and subtle dust lanes within our Galaxy, as well as 56 distinct nebulae and star clusters.

The moon projector of the ORPHEUS uses an embedded, LED-powered, HD video projector. Unlike all previous opto-mechanical planetariums in the world, which use mechanical devices to create basic moon phases, ORPHEUS can project not only the thinnest of crescent moons, but can also show the eerie "blood red" color of a lunar eclipse, or a golden Harvest Moon, and even earthshine on the darkened portion of the moon’s face.

Perhaps the most dramatic new feature of the ORPHEUS is the ability to turn stars on or off according to their brightness. Stars dimmer than magnitude 3.5 can be switched in groups of ½ magnitude each. So the operator can perfectly simulate the sky as seen through crystal clear mountaintop skies, or from a humid seaside location, a small village, or a giant city. After seeing the drastic difference in stellar visibility from different sites, audiences will hopefully help to minimize light pollution in their local skies.

While the ORPHEUS projector is truly remarkable, joining it with a synchronized fulldome digital projection system creates a stunning result. The VIRTUARIUM X system uses two Sony 4K video projectors utilizing laser phosphor illumination rather than traditional lamps with short lifetimes. The vivid colors emitted from the GOTO INC lenses are driven by a powerful array of graphics computers and VIRTUARIUM X software. GOTO INC was in fact the first company ever to put color, realtime-rendered video which covered a complete dome, in 1996. Since that time, our software has become amazingly sophisticated in its ability to show realistic…. and fantastic, animated scenes.

For more detailes；
GOTO HYBRID planetarium ORPHEUS

About GOTO INC

GOTO INC, founded in 1926, is the world’s largest manufacturer of opto-mechanical planetarium projectors, with more than 1,000 delivered worldwide. While originally a telescope manufacturer, GOTO has now shifted primarily to developing and producing planetarium equipment and programs. GOTO continues to be a planetarium industry leader in innovations such as LED illumination of projectors, digitally controlled planet positioning, fulldome video projection, and the GOTO HYBRID Planetarium” concept.

Since developing the world’s first color, realtime-rendering video system in 1996, GOTO has continued to refine the VIRTUARIUM system into today’s VIRTUARIUM X. When synchronized to a GOTO opto-mechanical star projector such as the ORPHEUS, PANDIA II, or CHIRON III, a GOTO HYBRID system gives not only the equivalent of 70K resolution of the stars, but colorful, animated video programming as well. GOTO HYBRID systems also utilize manual control consoles that give unprecedented control to users in live programming, or to create new program elements very rapidly after a celestial event takes place.