Take a Seat Under the Stars
Name a seat in Carnegie Science Center’s astonishing Buhl Planetarium
Take a Seat Under the Stars Campaign
Carnegie Science Center invites you to take part in an exciting opportunity to support the Buhl Planetarium Upgrade Project in an affordable, meaningful way by participating in the Take a Seat Under the Stars Campaign. By purchasing a seat, you will generate funds for immediate use to support additional planetarium upgrades and the development of new, state-of-the-art programming.
The Take a Seat Under the Stars Campaign offers a unique chance to celebrate a loved one, honor a STEM advocate, or give a memorable gift to “the person who has everything” by leaving them a legacy at the Carnegie Science Center for years to come. Seats in the Buhl Planetarium have never been available for naming, so don’t miss out!
Your donation will allow you to choose a name to engrave on a plaque prominently affixed to the armrest of the seat. Your plaque will remain affixed to the seat for 15 years and serve as a reminder to future audiences that your personal commitment helped to make their Buhl Planetarium experience possible.
You can dedicate a seat:
- As an individual, couple, or family
- For your children, grandchildren, or parents
- In memory of a loved one’s enthusiasm for the Buhl Planetarium and Carnegie Science Center
- With the name of a corporation or organization
- Honoring a birthday, anniversary, or other special occasion
The Difference You’ll Make
Help the Planetarium realize an exciting future for visitors of all ages and abilities. Your support will have a stellar impact. It will allow us to:
- Expand seating accessibility with wider, updated seats and an area of moveable seating to allow for wheelchairs.
- Refresh the theater with new carpeting.
Enhancements to the Henry Buhl, Jr. Planetarium & Observatory have already begun thanks to incredible community support. They include new assistive listening devices, closed-captioning glasses, and tactile reproductions of the night sky for visitors with vision impairments. The theater experience has been upgraded to include a new Sony projection system that utilizes 10 projectors to create a seamless, synchronized True8K high resolution images. Plus, every panel on Buhl Planetarium’s 50-foot-wide Pierce Family Dome was replaced with Spitz NanoSeam panels, manufactured in Pennsylvania, providing a new canvas for the cosmos. New Evans & Sutherland Digistar 7 Software features an extensive library of planetary models, real-time 3D computer graphics, and a catalog that incorporates data from dozens of organizations all over the world to generate the most complete and accurate 3D atlas of the universe.
Buhl Planetarium visitors can now travel to other stars and even exoplanets and fly through 3D digital nebulae based on volumetric data.
“For me, looking at the night stars and sky is one of the most soothing things in the world.” – Buhl Planetarium visitor
We invite you to Take a Seat Under the Stars. We’re positive you’ll enjoy the view!
Please let us know which seat you would like.
If you have any questions or prefer to make your gift in another way, please contact Lisa Keller at KellerL@CarnegieScienceCenter.org.
Click on the image below to view a PDF of the seating chart in a new window.
Transforming The Henry Buhl, Jr. Planetarium & Observatory
The story of Carnegie Science Center begins 80 years ago, with the Buhl Planetarium & Institute of Popular Science. First opening its doors in October 1939 on Pittsburgh’s North Side, it was the fifth major planetarium in the U.S. In October 1991, the newly established Carnegie Science Center continued its legacy at a new location with the opening of The Henry Buhl, Jr. Planetarium & Observatory. Since then, Buhl Planetarium has been a “theater of the stars” enjoyed by generations of Pittsburghers, with in-house produced theatric shows distributed to 1,500 planetariums around the world and translated into 18 different languages. Now it is time to refine the Buhl Planetarium once again.