TAMPA, Fla. — Local leaders revealed MOSI, Tampa’s Museum of Science and Industry, will open up the country's second largest digital dome planetarium next year.
On a field trip to MOSI on Wednesday, kids played, learned, and explored.
"They'll talk about it for weeks,” said Ashleigh Steiger.
Steiger is a math and science teacher at Learning Lodge Academy.
"Sometimes it's hard to get all those hands-on materials in your classroom, so having it all in one spot where they can roam free and explore is a neat experience kind of to watch them be kids and get to play with things and not even realize that they're learning at the same time,” said Steiger.
Soon, those avenues for learning will grow even more.
Local leaders from Tampa, Temple Terrace, and Hillsborough County unveiled plans to reopen the Dome Theatre.
The past theatre inside MOSI’s dome opened in 1995 and closed in 2017.
"This isn’t going to be, though, just reopening the doors and taking you back into what you had before. This is a digital dome theatre powered by ten high-powered, cutting-edge digital Christie projectors,” said MOSI CEO John Graydon Smith. “The 8K technology that you'll experience is far sharper, brighter, more immersive than the old film technology."
The theatre will also serve as the new Saunders Planetarium. The existing one can seat 46 guests at a time, but in the new dome, more than 300 people can share the experience at once.
Smith pointed out it'll be the nation's second-largest planetarium and digital theatre of its kind.
"This project sends the message once and for all that MOSI is here, here in Tampa, to stay, here in Uptown as an anchor institution across the street from USF, where there's going to be 35,000 screaming football fans in a couple of years,” said Smith.
Leaders said the investment also gives students a leg up on learning and exposure to STEM fields.
"I know space is kind of a hard concept to grasp for kids because it's not something you can actually touch,” said Steiger. “So being able to experience it in kind of a like life-size version will be neat for them to kind of be able to relate to it."
It's expected to open in early 2025.
