Slashdot Mirror
HomeStar - 21st Century Home Planetarium Review
Jeff writes "Direct from Japan, the SegaToys HomeStar is a unique home projector that turns any room into a planetarium, giving a clear view of the night sky. Using interchangeable plates, it's capable of displaying up to 10,000 stars of either northern or southern hemisphere, as well as their constellations. The starfield can move on a timer to simulate the earth's rotation. Also comes with a meteor generating function and sleep timer. Makes a great gift for the dad who has everything, or people who live in light-polluted areas." Check out Jeff's review of the unit.
Yeah, seriously. Who is going to use this? If you want to see the stars, just get out. If you want to see many stars, just go for a drive to a nice quiet place outdoors, it is really relaxing. What's the use of projecting stars to your ceiling? You might as well get a disco ball and shine some light on it.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I'm pretty sure that it has nothing to do with reference.
I actually figured the whole thing out after visiting both a Planetarium and a Bucky-Dome [bfi.org].
The first clue came at the planetarium. At the top of the dome was a small circle. If you visually estimated the size of the circle, you would assume it is 1-2 feet across. However, according to the planetarium guy, it is actually 6 feet across.
The second clue came at the Cinerama Dome. The dome, like all geodesics, is made up of identical hexagonal pieces. However, inside the dome, all the pieces look distorted and irregularly shaped.
The key here is that while both domes are semi-spherical, when you are in them, they both look like they are much wider than they are tall (sort of a squashed sphere shape). Your brain, for some reason, assumes that things directly above you are closer, and that things near the horizon are further, so the dome looks misshapen. With an improper mental image of distance, the tiles look distorted due to perspective, and the circle looks smaller because it is further than it appears.
Basically, what this means is that the moon is the correct size on the horizon, and this "bug" causes it to look too small when it is high in the sky.
And, if you think about it, this bug makes perfect sense. Most things your brain would see (think primitive man on the savanah here) that are straight ahead are going to be far away, or at least 10 meters or so away, so your brain adjusts accordingly. Similarly, most things you see when looking down are close, on the scale of a couple of meters, so your brain also adjusts from that. Most things you see looking up are the sky, and with no frame of reference, your brain assumes that looking up is just like looking down (after all, looking forwards is the same as looking backwards). Therefore, your brain associated things on the horizon as far, and therefore bigger than they appear, and things up or down as close, and smaller than they appear.
I've seen these type of setups before and while impressive they just don't hold a candle to the real thing. I was amazed when I went out on a ship in the middle of the pacific and looked up. You can't imagine how many stars and stuff you can see when you don't have anything else around but the ocean. Ever since then I've been less than impressed with these at home versions :[
I live in SoCal. The last time I saw more than a dozen or so stars in the sky was right after the Northridge Earthquake. The difference was amazing. I ran out to make sure our garage was still standing. Got two feet out the door stopped, looked up and say "Woah". Don't often see the milky-way in West SFV.
These are cool for parents to show their kids the night-time sky -- when the REAL nighttime sky is obscured. Most kids (mine included) are VERY interested in all sciences. I've one of these myself (not this particular one, but a decent one, nonetheless). My 4 year old daughter surprised me by placing on the wall a bunch of planet stickers. From the Sun to Pluto. In order -- AND "asteroids" between Mars and Jupiter.
Makes a father proud.
I think this is a nice, if expensive, toy for people in big cities. Even in small cities, light polution dims the view.
I've a friend back in London who had her ceiling painted with a mock-up of the night sky somewhere in Africa. She hired some company that specializes in glow-in-the-dark night sky displays working from real star maps.
I doubt this box is much more expensive.
Unfortunately, I've only had perhaps a dozen chances to look at a good, dark sky in my lifetime. But, fortunately, I have had those chances.
It's unreal. Just as it's hard to recognize the constellations from your typical U. S. suburban location, because you see too few stars, under good conditions it become hard to recognize the constellations because you see too many stars. The brighter stars that form the H. A. Rey connect-the-dots diagrams are lost in a sea of stars that look almost as bright.
I had a real "Aha!" moment on one of those occasions.
We've all been brought up to believe that the constellations are connect-the-dots stick-figures. And most of these stick-figures are so lousy that it's hard to believe anyone ever connected them with anything. There are a few exceptions, like Orion. (H. G. Wells wondered why the Christians had allowed the constellations to continue to be named after pagan mythology, and had never reinterpreted them. He figured that in any such interpretation Orion would be Christ...) Sagittarius does have something that perhaps can be seen to resemble a bow. But, mostly, they are a bunch of slightly-out-of-true triangles and boxes.
Well, one night, when the sky was full of, what can I say but stardust, I suddenly had this perceptual shift, like seeing a Necker cube reverse. I didn't see dots. I saw a silvery, stippled texture. And the sparser and denser stipples of starlight looked sort of like clouds. And, just as you see shapes in clouds... not connect-the-dots, stick-figure shapes, but solid, three-dimensional shapes... I saw solid, three-dimensional shapes, sculpted blobs of starry fog in which I thought I could see animals, and faces, and so forth, just as I can in clouds.
I can't prove it, but I am certain that this is the way the ancients perceived the sky.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!