Digital planetariums as virtual museums for discovering today's science

Abstract

Our study's concern is about how to enlarge the scope of the virtual museum concept from the mediation activities as they are carried out in today's digital planetariums to training activities dedicated to the public. We assume that these educational and cultural tools must be regarded as real immersive virtual environments and therefore can provide visitors with a new technological framing directly connected with a scientific field in the making, cosmography, in its production environment. One of our goals is to make visitors construct their own knowledge based directly on ongoing research data.