Apollo Project- star projector, NASA history collection

The specially designed star projector used in the Projection Planetarium. From A.W. Vogeley, "Piloted Space-Flight Simulation at Langley Research Center," Paper presented at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1966 Winter Meeting, New York, NY, November 27 - December 1, 1966. "Another approach to the scene-generation problem is the point-light-source projection technique. This technique has been used in the Langley Projection Planetarium,... to study Apollo launch-abort problems. This method was very effective in providing the required horizon-to-horizon view of Florida as seen from about 100,000 feet." "This projector operates on a concept developed by Spitz. It consists of a point-light source reflecting off a centrally located highly reflective sphere which directs the light outward through the many holes representing the stars. The size of the holes is varied to vary star magnitude. The star images are brought into focus on the inside of the planetarium by lenses glued to the surface of the projector and the diameter of the projection sphere govern the focal length required for these lenses. Although this type of projector does not have the precision required for the study of navigation problems it is very adequate for pilot control problems such as rendezvous where the star field is primarily used as an attitude reference.
NASA Identifier: L64-2771