higher res versions
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About this production
With this show, we return to our roots. In 1980, we attended some extremely uninspiring (and fortunately forgettable) planetarium show. Carolyn said, "I could write a show better than that." Mark said, "Okay, do it," and she did. We offered Light Years From Andromeda, our first show to the planetarium community, as a "script and soundtrack only" package; back then, we didn't have the visual production capability we do now.
In its 1997 classic incarnation, Carolyn polished the script. Mark recorded all new music — this time with digital fidelity (digital having been invented in the interim), and with synthesizers that could play actual chords instead of single notes. Tim Kuzniar and Michael Carroll created more than 100 artwork and graphics pieces to illustrate the show.
In 2009, the first of our classic analog-era planetarium shows became the last in the catalog to be recreated in the fulldome video medium. We made a few edits to the narration, to tweak the accuracy of some of the original 1980 numbers (the measured distances to Betelgeuse and Andromeda became more refined over the three intervening decades).
If you're a classic customer of the half-hour 1997 version, and want to update your show with the 2009 edit, please read this.
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![[Dorn's pic]](dorn_t.jpg) |
Light Years From Andromeda
Narrated by Michael Dorn
Worf of Star Trek movies and TV
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A journey between two galaxies spans human
history — and reveals the secrets of the cosmos!
Light Years From Andromeda is a story of cosmic distances, and humanity's quest to understand the universe. Take a journey of epic proportions across space and time!
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 A beam of light leaves the Andromeda Galaxy and travels across the void of intergalactic space. On a planet located in a nearby galaxy, intelligent life evolves. As the light speeds across the light years, over the course of centuries, the primitives on the planet form cultures and civilizations — and begin to wonder about the universe surrounding them.
 Their awareness of the night sky increases, as the beam of light draws nearer to their planet.When the light reaches the Earth, some of the descendants of the early hunters have just escaped the bonds of their world's gravity, and visited the Moon.
 In modern times, scientific study of space help the planet's current inhabitants to understand the properties of light, and the ways that understanding shapes our further knowledge of the universe.
Light Years From Andromeda teaches the concepts of light speed, the light year and how astronomers use them to measure distances to some familiar celestial objects — the Moon, the Sun, the planets, nearby stars, and galaxies.
The show briefly touches on the properties of light that help determine a star's age and temperature, and gives a fascinating look at how light and distance allow us to "look back" further in time as we gaze farther into space.
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