Great news! You no longer have to go to an expo/world’s fair/amusement park/science center to experience one of those omni dome theaters. The TOOB provides the same basic experience, though on a considerably smaller scale. Created by Alexander McDonnell, the TOOB consists of a half-dome movie screen that’s large enough for a couple of people to sit in front of, as well as a specially shaped mirror that reflects the image from a projector onto the dome’s surface. And since it’s powered by a regular home theater projector (instead of proprietary hardware) you can use it with any video source like a DVD player or a gaming console.
According to Cool Hunting, the home version of the TOOB, which measures 3-feet by 6-feet with an 18-inch reflector, sells for $1,440, but the hardware can be rented and is also available in a considerably larger 8-foot by 16-foot inflatable version for use outdoors.
Derrick Pitts, lead astronomer at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute, talks about the telescope used in the Bloom Observatory. The 10-inch refractor telescope has been around since 1934, and was built by Carl Zeiss Jena and shipped over from Germany.
The original observatory, opened in 1934, had two telescopes. The 10-inch, f/15 refractor, built by Carl Zeiss Jena, employed the latest optical and engineering techniques available in pre-World War II Germany. The 24-inch reflector telescope, manufactured by J.W. Fecker of Pittsburgh, was a convertible Newtonian/Cassegrain instrument with focal ratios of 14.4 and 7, respectively. The reflector was used for deep-sky observations, including the first recovery sighting of Comet Halley in the fall of 1985. City light pollution eventually rendered it ineffective, and the scope was moved to the Institute’s Space Command exhibit.
Bloom Observatory was renovated in 2006. Nationally-recognized telescope mechanic, Christopher Ray, of Ray Museum Studios and a professor of Mechanical Engineering from Swarthmore College, completely rebuilt the Zeiss refractor, upgrading it with modern PC-controlled DC-servo drives to achieve GO-TO pointing accuracy of better than 0.2 arc-seconds on both axes. The upgrade enables visitors to see not only the only the usual, but also thousands of faint objects (down to about magnitude 13)–despite high levels of ambient light pollution.
