At the end of October, the University of Toronto’s department of astronomy and astrophysics unveiled an idea to boldly do what no one has done before – or at least since 1968: to build a world-class planetarium in downtown Toronto.
Since the McLaughlin Planetarium (next to the Royal Ontario Museum) shuttered 23 years ago, there hasn’t been a large-scale planetarium for teaching, research and public use in the city’s core. (The Ontario Science Centre houses Toronto’s only public planetarium.)
The proposed planetarium would replace the current astronomy building on the St. George campus and feature a 200-seat dome with state-of-the-art projection technology housed in an architecturally distinctive design, and would be accessible to both students and the general public. Building one at U of T has been a discussion topic in the school’s astronomy department for years.
Currently, astronomy students are spread throughout campus, with the biggest classroom in the astronomy building having a capacity of 70. The department’s biggest class, however, has 1,500 students and is taught in Convocation Hall. When it’s time for those students to use the school’s current planetarium – an inflatable dome theatre in the building’s basement with a 4K projector that fits 25 people – it takes 60 sessions to get through everybody.
The Royal Ontario Museum cited failing attendance and a waning interest in astronomy for the closure of the McLaughlin Planetarium (though some have argued former premier Mike Harris’s provincial budget cuts had something to do with it). So why build a new one?
“It’s way better than just showing pictures on a screen at the front of the classroom,” says U of T’s astronomy chair Raymond Carlberg, adding a high-tech planetarium would benefit students at all levels. “It feels like you’re out there in the heavens, so it brings a lot of concepts to life in all sorts of ways.”
The idea is still in early stages, as Carlberg looks into provincial, federal and private donors for funding. As of yet, he says there isn’t an estimate on cost, which will ultimately depend on the construction bidding process.
While the department’s website features beautiful renderings of incredible architectural displays in other countries – the Hemisfèric planetarium at the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain, and the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City – Carlberg tells NOW that a “good-looking building built at a reasonable cost” is more realistic at this stage.
He expects to have a firmer plan a year from now, but for now there’s plenty of interest beyond the school.
“Judging by the attendance at planetariums in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Montreal, there is enough interest from the public to keep our planetarium very busy,” says Carlberg. “Modern digital planetariums do a lot more than just show stars moving across the sky.”
People with an extracurricular interest in space are receptive to the idea, particularly members of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. The president of the RASC Toronto Centre, B. Ralph Chou, says it’d be a wonderful tool for the Society’s own membership.
“For people in the city who don’t get a chance to see the night sky [because of the] light polluted environment, you can reproduce things from any point in the world and give people a really good chance to learn about the subtler points of what is happening in the sky,” says Chou.
He adds that planetariums give people an opportunity to look at signal variation, seasonal changes to the sky, orbital motions of planets and simulations of what’s going on in the sky that can’t be done with ordinary projections.
Sarah Symons, director of McMaster University’s William J. McCallion Planetarium in Hamilton, vouches for the benefits a planetarium provides a city, though the Hamilton planetarium is on a smaller scale than Toronto’s proposal, seating 35 people within a permanent structure in a basement. Graduate students serve as presenters during live weekly shows for community members on unique topics like the Harry Potter-themed Astronomy For Muggles, and the planetarium serves both astronomy students and students from outside the faculty.
“If you can’t see the night sky because you’re in the city, you can go to a planetarium to see what it looked like in history, how the stars looked from any point in space, and the latest discoveries,” says Symons.
“A planetarium dome is a perfect mixture, in my view, of science and art because it gives you an immersive canvas you can sit inside and see amazing things all around you,” she adds. “It’s not just an intellectual experience, but an emotional one.”