Planetarium Star Projectors

[SpitzSTP]

A picture of the xenon light source inside of the Starscape. It bounces a cone of light to the apex of the star chamber where it reflects off a large mirror down to a hemispherical mirror at the base of the chamber, dispersing the light evenly through the starfield lenses. The engineers at Spitz were quite clever in this rather complex design.

[DZ]

Part of the JHE Laser Projection system, a couple of rackmount ADAT tape decks and a unit labelled "JHE FM MODEM", along with a box of ADAT tapes. There is of course, a table that goes with it.

Attachment 31107Attachment 31108

Oh wow! I remember running some of those shows from JHE! They were pretty decent, the content was created using Pangolin software on the Amiga. Abstracts were done on an old gutted LSDC analog console. He even still has all that stuff last time I visited with him. The shows were 3 color (RYG), projectors were about as basic as it got, couple HeNe's, G-120 scan head and G-120 flag blanking. Spitz, I would love to see this old JHE material get off of the ADAT tapes and preserved if at all possible. Dumped to the QM2K via LC-ADAT would be best in my opinion...

[swamidog]

i have an ADAT+lightpipe on the way.. i'd be happy to do some preserving.

Oh wow! I remember running some of those shows from JHE! They were pretty decent, the content was created using Pangolin software on the Amiga. Abstracts were done on an old gutted LSDC analog console. He even still has all that stuff last time I visited with him. The shows were 3 color (RYG), projectors were about as basic as it got, couple HeNe's, G-120 scan head and G-120 flag blanking. Spitz, I would love to see this old JHE material get off of the ADAT tapes and preserved if at all possible. Dumped to the QM2K via LC-ADAT would be best in my opinion...

[DZ]

i have an ADAT+lightpipe on the way.. i'd be happy to do some preserving.

That would be perfect, just get them the hell off of adat...

[SpitzSTP]

That's GREAT!!! Preserving the legacy of this artform is a paramount concern. I am grateful to you for offering this and I will take you up on it !!! I would like this material to survive long after I am gone. If we don't do it, who will ? This JHE system will be kept intact also.. I wonder, how many survive besides this one.

i have an ADAT+lightpipe on the way.. i'd be happy to do some preserving.

[swamidog]

let's make that happen. i had to burn a ton of time for indian market at the heard museum, but i'm around now. plus, you need to spend some quality time basking in laser lumia.

That's GREAT!!! Preserving the legacy of this artform is a paramount concern. I am grateful to you for offering this and I will take you up on it !!! I would like this material to survive long after I am gone. If we don't do it, who will ? This JHE system will be kept intact also.. I wonder, how many survive besides this one.

[SpitzSTP]

let's make that happen. i had to burn a ton of time for indian market at the heard museum, but i'm around now. plus, you need to spend some quality time basking in laser lumia.

Yes, let's DO IT .. I spent the last four months in North Carolina, holed up in a hotel room and I returned to Phoenix two weeks ago. Last few days been organizing the house which had been piled high with surplus laser and planetarium equipment that I pulled out of Colorado, Wyoming, Missouri and Indiana. I can now walk in here, and been starting to pick up where I left off on the restoration work. Please do come by when you can. I have the ADAT tapes handy, and I do have two tape ADAT machines that came with the JHE although I have not tested them yet.

[SpitzSTP]

I was poking around and found a new version of this JHE projector for sale on eBay. It is interesting to note the asking price for this system ($5,000) plus the shows that go with it (@$695/each). Link:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/JHE-RG-3-LAS...h=iteme37d1b8a

Oh wow! I remember running some of those shows from JHE! They were pretty decent, the content was created using Pangolin software on the Amiga. Abstracts were done on an old gutted LSDC analog console. He even still has all that stuff last time I visited with him. The shows were 3 color (RYG), projectors were about as basic as it got, couple HeNe's, G-120 scan head and G-120 flag blanking. Spitz, I would love to see this old JHE material get off of the ADAT tapes and preserved if at all possible. Dumped to the QM2K via LC-ADAT would be best in my opinion...

[DZ]

That's actually Joe's auction! He still has a few things left, back in the day he could easily get that price for these projectors, or more. That auction has been on ebay for about 10 years now. It amazes me how much it use to cost to build a projector like this and have an output of maybe 10mW, total! Now, you throw together some diodes and cheap Chinese scanners and you have a projector that runs circles around this one and is 10 times brighter for less than $200. Then again, there's something special about having a projector that's 100% American made.

[SpitzSTP]

I see JHE products at nearly every planetarium I have visited for equipment pulls. I pulled out the xenon lamp source from the Starscape starballs (there are two of them, one for north and south hemispheres) - taking them to a friend in Cave Creek who can get them running so the starballs will once again emit starlight. He is also pouring the concrete slab for his dome on Sunday, and I will be there to assist These are 150-watt xenon air-cooled short-arc lamps using ILC power supplies (pictured). They probably work fine, but I want to be sure I have them wired correctly before igniting them. At 300 watts total this should produce stars that are plenty bright for laser shows.