The Austin Planetarium store is open for business!

The Austin Planetarium store is up and running. If you are a regular visitor to our website, you may have noticed that our online store has been in development. The day has finally come to turn the open sign around in the window, and start offering our Planetarium paraphernalia to the world. You can visit the Store section of our website and peruse our selection of Planetarium goods including T-Shirts, mugs, stickers and more. You can also get special items like the incredible coffee table book Cosmos: A Field Guide.

Now you can show your Planetarium pride by sporting a t-shirt with our logo, or you can grab your groceries in style with a Planetarium tote bag. And what better way to stay warm this winter than sipping some hot chocolate from an official Austin Planetarium mug. Purchasing products from our store is a great way to support the Austin Planetarium and show your commitment to our cause. All proceeds from sales at the Austin Planetarium store go towards the effort to bring Austin its first Planetarium, Science Museum, and Technology Center. Additionally, all transactions are secure and your personal information will not be shared. Let the shopping begin!

Iconic Austinite Hosts Benefit to Bring the Stars to Austin

Gaming Guru and Space Explorer Richard Garriott hosted a benefit for the development of Austin’s first planetarium, science museum, and technology center.

Austin, Texas, October 23, 2009, Britannia Manor – Austin software mogul Richard Garriott hosted a fundraiser benefiting the Austin Planetarium. The event was held at his legendary estate, Britannia Manor and it drew some big names from the world of science and technology.

Located in the hills of West Austin, Britannia Manor is famous for its medieval architecture, secret passages, hidden rooms, and eclectic artifacts. Additionally, the house has an observatory, which really drove home the planetarium theme. For the event, Mr. Garriott provided tours of the Manor and displayed pieces from his collection of space memorabilia, like an original Soviet Sputnik satellite and the space suit from his 2008 visit to the International Space Station.

Other items on display included multimedia architectural proposals for the Austin Planetarium and Science Museum facility, provided by Davis Architects. Davis employed videos, static images, and even a hologram to give party goers a glimpse of their vision for the Austin Planetarium Facility. In the “Exploratorium” tent guests could get some hands on time with some of the items from Mr. Garriott’s collections, like a piece of the deck of the Titanic and a hunk of one of the lightest substances known to man Aerogel. The “Exploratorium” tent also offered a space themed flight sim, some mad scientist style science gadgets, and a 6’ Magic Planet manned by our good friend Steve Utt.  Nearby, Planetarium partner Anthony Plattsmier of Open Gadget was showing off some incredible 3D imaging technology that he is pioneering.

The event also entertained guests with professional magicians who wowed the guests on the lawn and spiced up the already smoking hot tours of Britannia Manor. And what Planetarium party would be complete without some stargazing? And who better to conduct the stargazing then Astronomy giant Galileo Galilei. That’s right Galileo himself was in attendance, presenting the stars to guests through a telescope far more modern and capable than the 30X number he built almost 400 years ago.

Guests were able to take part in a live auction presided over by Austin Planetarium Executive Director Torvald Hessel and host Richard Garriott. Among the items up for auction were a lunar lithograph signed by Buzz Aldrin, some authentic meteorites that originated on the Moon and Mars, and a trip to Tennessee to meet and dine with June Scobee Rodgers, one of the founding directors of the Challenger Center for Space Education and widow of Dick Scobee, Commander of the ill-fated STS-51-L Challenger mission. The closing auction item was a zero-g flight, which auctioneer Richard Garriott characterized as “life changing”; and having participated in many zero-g flights, he would know.

After the auction the sky above Britannia Manor was lit up by a spectacular fireworks display, a fitting end to an incredible night. The Gala event made a big splash for the Austin Planetarium and introduced our mission to a whole new audience. We would like to extend our most sincere gratitude to all the guests, volunteers, employees, partners, board members, friends and family who worked so hard to make this event a reality. We would also like to extend a special thank you to those individuals who went above and beyond the call of duty by purchasing items from the auctions. And, last but not least, an extremely special thanks to our gracious host Richard Garriott for his vision and generosity in his support for the development of the Austin Planetarium.

A new website!

After many months of hard work we finally have a brand new website in place! Not only has the look and feel changed, but we also have much more content. We integrated the blog, created many more pages detailing the Austin Planetarium project, and launched our membership drive!

The old website was badly in need of a workover, after all, it was designed more then 5 years ago. Since that time we have  gained a new logo, and the project itself has changed as well. For all those reasons we had started the process of a complete overhaul. The new website is designed by the folks from NAKA Media, and boy do they do spectacular work. Because they are huge planetarium supporters, this work was all donated to the Austin Planetarium. We truly are now the non-profit with the most beautiful website!

Through the hard work of several volunteers, we finally were able to set the website up in a content management system to simplify editing and enhancing many features. And, as stated before, added a lot of different content. We now also describe the Science Museum as well as the Technology Center, and hopefully will start adding things like potential building designs and such.