The Star Theater Pro Home Planetarium is an affordable little doodade that turns any room into a planetarium by projecting stars onto your ceilings and walls. If you don’t quite have the pocket cash to fund your own trip into outer space like, say, Virgin Galactic owner Richard Branson, then this little device will bring space to you. At least in a manner of speaking. If you’re not familiar with the idea of a planetarium, it’s a device that creates a visual map of the stars on a ceiling and/or wall. Many universities have full-sized planetariums that they can use for educational purposes. On the other hand, I always wanted to sneak into the university planetarium with a six-pack of beer and a picnic.
This device is small enough to create a planetarium in your home. You can take this device and set it up in your living room (for example) and sit back and watch the stars float past. Not a bad way to spend your evening – especially for us city dwellers who have to compete with ambient light, pollution and skyscrapers to get a peek at those glimmering diamonds we like to call stars.
The sturdy little device comes with an AC adapter (it can also be powered by three triple A batteries), two interchangeable high resolution image discs and a planetarium music disc. The device has an adjustable projection angle, motorized image rotation and an automatic timer – which makes it pretty ideal for camping out in the living room under the “stars.”
The higher your ceilings and he darker you can get your room the better the experience is going to be. You can set the rotation of the stars to give a realistic feel – and you can take advantage of the timer so that the device will shut itself off after you fall asleep.
The spherical portion of the Star Theater is 6” in diameter and with base it stands about 7”. Additional discs are available if you want to learn some constellations or get a slightly different set of images. All-in-al the Star Theater Pro will set you back $170, which should leave you enough cash in your pocket to buy s’mores supplies. Of course, I wouldn’t advise roasting those marshmallows over an open fire unless you have a fireplace in your house. For the Star Wars fan in your life will probably prefer other home planetariums — granted some folks would prefer to see the real thing with one of the many fancy telescopes out there.
