OpenSpace: From Your Desktop to the Dome, Thursday, June 30, 2022

Presented to the NASA Museum Alliance. Discover the capabilities of OpenSpace for your museum. OpenSpace software is a NASA-funded, open-source visualization and presentation tool that can be used for on-site and on-line programming. During this one-hour session, members of the OpenSpace team will share how museums across the country are using the software to create content for their theaters and planetarium domes, exhibition floors, learning labs, and streaming programs. The team will also demonstrate exciting new content, including the James Webb Space Telescope and dynamic heliophysics.

Learn more about OpenSpace software: https://www.openspaceproject.com/

Participants are encouraged to download and try the latest version of the software (0.18) ahead of the training, which will be recorded for future reference.

Speakers:

Carter Emmart
As the Director of Astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History, Carter Emmart directs the institution’s groundbreaking space shows and heads up development of an interactive 3D atlas called The Digital Universe and the NASA-supported software to view it in called OpenSpace. He coordinates scientists, programmers and artists to produce scientifically accurate yet visually stunning and immersive space experiences in AMNH’s Hayden Planetarium. Over the past two decades, he has directed six shows: “Passport to the Universe,” “The Search for Life: Are we Alone,” “Cosmic Collisions,” “Journey to the Stars,” “Dark Universe,” and “Worlds Beyond Earth.” Emmart’s interest in space began early, and at ten, he was taking astronomy courses in the old Hayden. As a child born into a family of artists, he naturally combined his love of science with his tendency for visualization. His first work was in architectural modeling, soon moving on to do scientific visualization for NASA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, before joining AMNH.

Micah Acinapura
Micah Acinapura works as a Software Integration Engineer on the OpenSpace project at the American Museum of Natural History. He holds a BA in Computer Science from Earlham College and previously worked for more than a decade building interactive digital experiences in the advertising and gaming industries.

Megan Villa
Megan Villa is the Project Coordinator for OpenSpace. She got her Bachelor's in Anthropology and Journalism from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and her Master's in Museum Studies from New York University.