Digital Space Theatre in New Beijing Planetarium Powered by SGI and Zeiss Provides Immersive Hands-On Window to the Universe

Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center.

cobe payloads

(Photo: http://www.
"The world's first digital , all-dome-laser-projected, real-time
planetarium is truly spectacular," said Bill La Rosa, senior vice president
and general manager, ICON, SGI.

intergalactic ripples

Presenters are
able to move seamlessly between real-time and playback mode, simulating events
such as eclipses and the passage of comets to create new shows to immerse,
entertain, and educate audiences."

SILICON GRAPHICS | The Source of Innovation and Discovery(TM)
SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc.

NOTE: Silicon Graphics, SGI, Onyx, Reality Center, InfiniteReality, the
SGI cube and the SGI logo are registered trademarks and InfiniteReality3,
InfiniteReality4 and The Source of Innovation and Discovery are trademarks of
Silicon Graphics, Inc. WASHINGTON, How do you hide something as big and
bright as a galaxy? You smother it in cosmic dust.
"We are seeing galaxies that are essentially invisible ," said Dr., co-author of the study detailing
the discovery.caltech.

revved tophat

All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective
owners. "We can break apart the light from a distant
galaxy using a spectrograph, but only if we see a recognizable signature from
a mineral like silicate , can we figure out the distance to that galaxy,"
Soifer said. It
took Spitzer's improved sensitivity , 100 times greater than past missions, to
finally seek out the dusty galaxies at great distances .spitzer.

repulsive worldviews

Located behind the old planetarium, the brand-new dazzling glass building
is 30 meters high, occupying 20 thousand square meters, and has three theaters
and two observatories. An additional 3-pipe Onyx system with
InfiniteReality3(TM) graphics is installed in the dome for show development
and pre-show presentations. It will be published in today's issue of the Astrophysical
Journal Letters.

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Priscilla Frisch of the Department of Astronomy
and Astrophysics, University of Chicago and SGI produced the "Solar Journey"
show, a NASA-funded production that was specially created for the Beijing
Planetarium Dome. The heliosphere, roughly twice the size
of the orbit of Pluto, is shown in the dome powering its way smoothly through
interstellar medium and sheltering the solar system from much of its dust and
gases. With this
feature audiences can make choices about where they wish to go in the Cosmos
and even chose the specific routes they want the presenter to take . By studying these galaxies,
we'll get a better idea of our own galaxy's history," said Cornell's Dr."
Further observations using Spitzer's infrared spectrograph revealed the
presence of silicate dust in 17 of these 31 galaxies.

messier shapley

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Another question astronomers would like to address is whether dusty ,
bright galaxies like these eventually evolve into fainter, less murky ones
like our own Milky Way. Buell Jannuzi, co-principal investigator for the Deep Wide-Field Survey,
"so the dusty galaxies Spitzer found truly are needles in a cosmic haystack.

cosmic revved

com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050120/SFTH021 )
Since its founding in 1957, the Beijing Planetarium has played a national
role in Chinese astronomical education resulting in many textbooks,
audiovisual aids and scientific works. For science accuracy and expertise, SGI collaborated with
Dr.com
650-933-5683

Lingling Zhang
SGI China
ling@sgi.

NASA'S Spitzer Space Telescope Exposes Dusty Galactic Hideouts

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The Digital Universe
SGI Professional Services specially created the Digital Universe
application that can be used to run real-time shows and also create new shows. "Past infrared missions hinted at the presence of similarly
dusty galaxies over 20 years ago, but those galaxies were closer .

payloads systematically

MEDIA CONTACTS
Lisa Pistacchio
SGI Corporate
pistacchio@sgi . The team compared the thousands of galaxies seen in this
infrared data to the deepest available ground-based optical images of the same
region, obtained by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory Deep Wide-Field
Survey.

systematically cobe

Andrew Hanson, Dr. In
addition, the Planetarium can be used for special events.

revved payloads

The SGI architecture allows the entire dome
display to be controlled from a wireless PDA so that even a child can visit
constellations or tour the galaxies with the press of a button.
To enhance the entertainment and educational value even further, the
planetarium has been equipped with a special interactive digital audience
voting system built into the armrest of each of the 200 seats. NASA's Spitzer Space
Telescope saw through the cosmic dust to uncover a hidden population of
monstrously bright galaxies approximately 11 billion light-years away. This led to the identification of 31 galaxies that can be seen only by
Spitzer. Galaxies similar to these in dustiness, but much closer to
Earth, were first alluded to in 1983 via observations made by the joint NASA-
European Infrared Astronomical Satellite., manages the
Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington.

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This unique
installation is now linked to the immense resources of the Virtual Science
Network, a group of scientists and researchers, all of whom are SGI customers
that exchange and contribute an amazing variety of visualization content
developed on the SGI platform to museums, science centers and educational
outreach institutions. Through the Virtual Science Network, Beijing
Planetarium audiences will be connected to endless worlds of discovery. SGI's vision is to provide technology
that enables the most significant scientific and creative breakthroughs of the
21st century. Quasars, like
giant light bulbs at the centers of galaxies, are powered by huge black holes.
The Cornell-led team first scanned a portion of the night sky for signs of
invisible galaxies using an instrument onboard Spitzer called the multiband
imaging photometer .
Silicates are sand-like planetary building blocks.

This category comprises those aspects of cosmology which are primarily of an astronomical or observational nature, as well as sites related to theoretical and numerical studies of the large- scale structure in the universe.

quasars cosmic

This real-time database of our known Universe will keep growing as we make
more discoveries. "It's possible stars like our sun grew up in dustier,
brighter neighborhoods, but we really don't know.
In this case, the galaxies were dated back to a time when the universe was
only three billion years old, or one-quarter of its present age of 13.5
billion years.
The National Optical Astronomy Observatory Deep Wide-Field Survey used the
National Science Foundation's 13-foot telescope at Kitt Peak National
Observatory southwest of Tucson, Ariz.

Cosmology is the scientific study of the structure and origin of the universe as a whole.

relativistic tophat

These strange galaxies are among the most luminous in the universe,
shining with the equivalent light of 10 trillion suns.

midex relativistic

newscom.
"The new Beijing Planetarium also includes the Beijing Ancient Observatory
which has eight astronomical instruments from the Qing Dynasty and is located
near the Jian Guo Gate.Y.
Where is all this dust coming from? The answer is not quite clear. Later, the European Space Agency's
Infrared Space Observatory faintly recorded comparable , nearby objects.

cosmic reconciled

This particular dust
grain is significant, because it is a planetary building block , and it also
helped astronomers determine how far away the galaxies are from Earth.
"This is the furthest back in time silicate dust has been detected around
a galaxy.

cosmology worldviews

, For
an experience that's truly out of this world, visitors to the 2008 Summer
Games will need to go no further than the new Beijing Planetarium. The world's
first digital all-dome laser-projected real-time planetarium is powered by a
Zeiss All Dome Laser Image Projection system driven by SGI(R) Onyx(R)
visualization computers.
Other contributing partners for SGI were Leonard Wickberg III, Hubble
Space Telescope Science Institute, NASA; Brent Tully, University of Hawaii;
University of Queensland; David Malin and the American Museum of Natural
History-New York provided the "Search for Life" show. With offices worldwide, the
company is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. But, they are so far
away and so drenched in dust, it took Spitzer's highly sensitive infrared eyes
to find them.

accelerating reconciled

Indiana University, Dr. This new world-class planetarium preserves our past
while providing a window to the future," said a Beijing Planetarium
expert/specialist. "SGI Reality Center environments have been
deployed all around the world in a vast variety of areas. The latest
innovations in automotive and aerospace design, surgical procedures, modeling
of biological molecules or virtual reconstructions of heritage sites can all
be brought into the dome.sgi.
JPL is a division of Caltech.

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The interactivity of the SGI Digital Space Theatre means visitors can have
an entirely unique experience ., is a leader in high-performance
computing, visualization and storage.edu.

repeats extraterrestrial

Arriving on the second floor by escalator, visitors can
see the 200-seat SGI Digital Space Theatre with its 18-meter dome , tilted 15
degrees.
The dome is powered by a 24-processor SGI Onyx visualization system with
12GB RAM and six SGI(R) InfiniteReality4(TM) graphic pipes, each with 1GB of
dedicated texture memory. Another mystery is the exceptional brightness of the
galaxies. Thomas Soifer, study co-author and director of the Spitzer
Science Center, Pasadena, Calif.

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In the newly opened SGI(R) Digital Space Theatre,
visitors will -- for the first time -- see spectacular high-contrast color
images including more than 37,000 stars, 30,000 galaxies, constellations,
nebulae, planets, spacecraft, and deep space objects. Philip Fu and a team of scientists at the Indiana
University. Whether it's sharing images to aid in brain surgery, finding oil
more efficiently, studying global climate, providing technologies for homeland
security and defense, or enabling the transition from analog to digital
broadcasting , SGI is dedicated to addressing the next class of challenges for
scientific, engineering and creative users.

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In 2002, after intense reviews, the
Beijing Planetarium contracted Silicon Graphics (NYSE: SGI) to build a digital
planetarium solution that would represent a paradigm shift in how planetariums
can become destination spots to educate and entertain visitors. This will be the first time that visitors will be able to
see visualization of the heliosphere. Dan
Weedman of Cornell University , Ithaca, N. Dust is
churned out by stars, but it is not known how the dust wound up sprinkled all
around the galaxies. Finding silicate dust at this very early epoch is important for
understanding when planetary systems like our own arose in the evolution of
galaxies," said Dr.

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SGI also provided 580GB of SGI(R) InfiniteStorage
TP9100 and TP900 systems, enough to run two playback and two real -time shows. We had to
wait for Spitzer to peer far enough into the distant universe to find these ,"
he said. Astronomers speculate a new breed of unusually dusty quasars, the
most luminous objects in the universe, may be lurking inside. "This large area took us many months to survey from the ground ," said
Dr.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.

Sites related to relativistic cosmology or the physics of the early universe will be found in Science:Physics:Cosmology.

relativistic accelerating

BEIJING and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., and can be found on the Web
at http://www. James
Houck, lead author of the study.
Artist's conceptions, images and additional information about the Spitzer
Space Telescope are available at: http://www.