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Topic: Blue Planet [IMAX]

Evans A Criswell
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1579
From: Huntsville, AL, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 03-23-2003 11:49 PM

Blue Planet was the first IMAX movie I ever saw in an IMAX theatre and after watching it again last night on DVD, I can say it's my favorite so far out of the ones I've seen. The reasons are a bit personal.

So why is this particular IMAX movie so special to me? My job at the University of Alabama in Huntsville is on the research side, and I worked at Marshall Space Flight Center from 1989-1994, then at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center from 1994 to 1999, then at Technology Hall at UAH (although I collaborate with people at the National Space Science and Technology Center). [Same job, different offices at different locations]

I believe the year was 1993 or 1994 when a meeting was held involving people from Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) at other NASA sites around the country. We were a DAAC at the time. We all went to Green Hills Grille for dinner, then all went to the Alabama Space and Rocket Center for a free tour of the museum and an IMAX movie. Blue Planet was the one!

Having worked in the Earth Science and Applications Division at a time when the Mission to Planet Earth program and Global Change Research were very important, Blue Planet is a reminder of the focus in those days around 1990 when it was filmed.

There are many great shots of Earth from space. I remember being awed by these images when I first saw them on the dome IMAX screen at the Space Center. My friends enjoyed seeing these images last night on DVD.

The section on weather (lightning and hurricanes) were special because most of the data I've worked with on my job are from instruments on satellites that take atmospheric measurements from space (brightness, reflectivity, etc. at different frequencies).

One of the images put into the movie (one of the "small square" images) looks like data I used to see one scientist copying from videotape to videotape in the McIDAS lab in building 4481 back in 1991 or 1992. That lab was full of different monitors and vieo equipment setup to deal with satellite imagery. If that one image of the lightning on earth seen from space looked like it came from videotape, it probably did. We had those tapes out there and scientist could get copies of them back then.

When I watch "Blue Planet", I'm not only fascinated by the imagery from space, but I'm reminded of many people I've worked with over the years as a UAH employee working as a NASA contractor. "Blue Planet" is a great collection of interesting segments showing the focus of NASA's Earth Science research in the early 1990s. (It was made in 1990). I've worked with many NASA scientists from 1988 to the present, and being on the computer science and information technology side of things has allowed me to come in contact with many interesting atmospheric scientists and their research.

I still remember gripping the armrests on my chair tightly while the "trip along the San Andreas Fault" was shown, feeling I was actually on a roller coaster or something. There's nothing like having one's entire field of vision taken up by an extremely clear scene. It can trick you into feeling that you're falling or moving when you aren't.

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