I sink into my comfortable chair, a soothing melody caressing my ears and a calm voice welcoming me on a completely different journey. I am under a canopy, an acre, and before my eyes are pictures of incomparable beauty. I feel like I’m in the middle of galaxies, but in fact I came to see the new production of the New Digital Planetarium at the Eugenides Foundation, called “Journey to the Galaxy”, which promises a unique introduction to the mysterious and fascinating world of stars, from their birth to their death.

The immersive experience begins on the tiny planet Earth and extends beyond our solar system, exploring the limits of “out there”. “With this new show, as we call it, we want to highlight the question of what is happening outside, far away,” Planetarium director and scientific director of the production Manos Kitsonas tells me. “Because so many children visit the planetarium, we found that they often lack basic knowledge about space,” he adds. The digital show, which has an educational and entertaining nature, like all the others in the Planetarium, is trying to popularize our scientific knowledge about the Cosmos in an interesting way, and it does it very well. In essence, he is offering us a first-class ticket on a flight to the most unexplored places imaginable.

The viewer of Journey to the Galaxy has the opportunity to go through a “vast stellar state” and learn from the most basic information about the Cosmos, from how stars form, to much more specialized information such as pulsars, dark matter, and black matter. holes. He sees supernova explosions happening near him, and cosmological phenomena of extraordinary beauty and reverence parade over his head. At times, the experience becomes literally dizzying. For 40 minutes, you board an imaginary spacecraft and feel like an ordinary astronaut, guided by a storyteller who cares about our basic knowledge of galaxies.

Screenplay, scientific editing and narrative text signed by Alexis Delivorias. The original music was composed by Anastasios Katsaris, directed by Panagiotis Simopoulos, and the play is narrated by actor Thanasis Kourlambas.

There is no doubt that the viewer will get acquainted with the vast scale of the vast Cosmos and will surely learn the very basics, and this is a great acquisition. “Our solar system is about 26,000 light-years from the galactic center,” notes Mr. Kitsonas, “while Centauri, the closest star to Earth after the Sun, is “only” 4 light-years away from us, a negligible distance for astronomical scales, but truly unimaginable by human standards. If this were the target of Voyager 1, moving at a speed of 17 kilometers per second, it would have arrived there in 70,000 years!”

Next to him, the viewer sees supernova explosions, and above his head a parade of cosmological phenomena of extraordinary beauty, causing awe.

Disinformation

Journey to the Galaxy is intended for viewers over the age of 10 and has added value in an era where misinformation and fake news spread very easily. “This show is kind of an antidote to scientific illiteracy,” notes Mr. Kitsonas, “to all these theories that talk about a flat Earth, as well as about astrology. It is also quite another thing to see all this information in the Planetarium from the screen of your mobile phone. The goal is to understand that we may be small in the universe, but we, like the stars, are unique. Interestingly, very large companies are zealous for space exploration. it means there is something. In addition, we must understand that we do not have another planet for life, except for the Earth, so we must be sure that we will not destroy it.”

“Journey to the Galaxy”, screenings begin at 19.15, from Wednesday to Sunday.