SOLAR MAX

To the sun and back.

`Solarmax' takes viewers on spectacular journey

Everyone from hard-nosed rationalists to granola-munching mystics should find something to savor in "Solarmax," the latest offering at the zoo's Sprint IMAX Theatre.

The subject is Old Sol, the sun, the star that is as responsible for life on Earth as any other scientifically verifiable occurrence.

Sponsored in large part by the National Science Foundation, "Solarmax" is a bit heavier on science than are most IMAX-type offerings, a fact that may make it a bit cerebral for very young viewers. For the rest of us, though, it's quite a feast.

Director John Weiley knows how to sandwich his factoids among splendiferous visuals, and so this examination of the sun covers lots of territory. For those who get off on such things, there are visits to the lost city of Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes and a journey to a huge stone and dirt structure in Ireland believed to contain the "oldest room on Earth." Both apparently were designed by lost civilizations as astronomical instruments, and the IMAX camera is there to capture the first rays of the rising sun as they pierce these ancient structures.

There's a segment on the development of scientific thought regarding the sun and its place in the cosmology, with due attention paid Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo and other deep thinkers.

But what really will blow viewers' minds is the new footage of the sun itself, so spectacular that a disclaimer at the beginning of "Solarmax" assures us that it's the real thing and not some computer-generated simulacrum.

Projected on the eight-story screen, these images have an almost hypnotic power, thanks to special cameras that record not only the solar flares that continually erupt into space but also the various currents of heat swirling beneath the gaseous surface. It's sort of like creation's biggest lava lamp, pulsing with furious energy, boiling and bubbling with immeasurable heat. Put this footage on a tape loop, and you have the world's greatest light show; you could project it on your wall and zone out.

As is invariably the case with large-format movies, there are some just plain beautiful moments -- like a time-lapse sequence that shows the summer sun circling the Arctic horizon but never setting (thus the "Land of the Midnight Sun") and that shimmering curtain of light known as the aurora borealis.

Just to pump up the fun, Weiley has cast as his narrator a Patrick Stewart sound-alike, so you can pretend that your guide through the cosmos is none other than "Star Trek's" Jean-Luc Picard.

source: www.kcstar.com