About Us

The idea of the planetarium at TAMIU was born in 1999. The vision was to build a Planetarium along with a new science building. Thanks to the support of our legislators, the 77th State Legislature approved the project in 2001. The TAMIU Planetarium has one of the few new generation digital projectors. Prior technology only allowed a view from the Earth; this projector allows viewing from any part of the known universe. Thus, one can travel to structures unseen, except to highly developed telescopes. The Digistar 3 projectors use powerful graphics hardware and software to generate immersive full-dome images on the interior surface of a dome, integrating all-dome video, real time 3D computer graphics, and a complete digital astronomy package.

Designed as a state-of-the-art 21st Century digital planetarium instrument, Digistar 3 is a fully integrated system that replaces the need for traditional planetarium equipment such as slide projectors, special effects projectors, slewable video projectors, etc.