By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The moon hurtles overhead, appearing close enough to touch, before the view shifts to a stomach-churning swoop into a deep gorge on Mars in a new planetarium show that few will be tempted to doze through.

Photos Reuters Photo

"Infinity Express," a 20-minute excursion of the universe previewed on Tuesday at the National Air and Space Museum, is the first planetarium exhibit to use 12 digital projectors that can put images on every bit of the 70-foot dome, instead of losing space near the edges.

But what makes it compelling -- even if it induces a touch of nausea for some viewers -- is the rapid, high-definition movement displayed over an area greater than the huge IMAX screens used for large-format films.

"A lot of people say it's 3-D, but it's not really 3-D," said Steve Savage, president of Sky-Skan Inc., the New Hampshire-based company that designed the projection system. "It happens all around you, so it gives the impression of 3-D."

The show opens with a pink and blue blur, darkening to dusk amid the sounds of birds chirping, car doors slamming, a party quieting down and observers setting up a telescope.

The dome dims and the stars come out, projected by the planetarium's 27-year-old Zeiss VI-a star projector.

As actor Laurence Fishburne narrates, the crescent moon that has hung quietly near the dome's zenith zooms into close-up, followed by a fast dash through the solar system in which planets appear to just miss viewers as they go by.

The Zeiss instrument is still the best device for projecting a star field, but the 12 digital projectors make possible a vertiginous rocket trip through the planets, into the Milky Way and then out into a slice of sky dense with jewel-toned smudges -- distant galaxies detected by astronomers as they peer back in time toward the theoretical Big Bang.

PILOT'S EYE VIEW

The movement and color is made possible by the new 12 projectors, in six pairs.

As in movie theaters, all seats are angled toward a common point in the Einstein Planetarium, instead of placed in concentric circles in the classic configuration of the New Hayden Planetarium in New York.

"The pictures are made purposely to have a front, a back, a left, a right and a top, and those cues, those eye cues, are working on you," Savage told Reuters. "Producers want audiences to see the show right side up. If half the audience is in the front of the theater, then half the audience is seeing the show upside down. So that (seating system) fixes that problem."

The projectors are ideal for taking astronomical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (news - web sites) and the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft and making them into almost tactile images.

One of the most eye-catching was the view of the gigantic Valles Marineris on Mars, the largest canyon in the solar system, which is five times deeper than the Grand Canyon.

John Stoke of the Space Telescope Science Institute said the new tools will help bring fresh information to the public.

"This is an opportunity to present the universe a bit more truthfully, on a very big screen that's very immersive," Stoke said.

The museum's Andrew Johnston said the planetarium uses authentic data: "When we're flying through the galaxies, those galaxies are not made up, you're actually flying through their actual positions."

And Savage said there was one sure sign of the exhibit's appeal.

"We've not heard any snoring yet. ... Usually it's cool and dark and comfortable seats and everybody's dozing off in no time," Savage said. "That hasn't been happening."

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