A fulldome program is visually a dramatic experience when immersed in imagery making the audience feel they are almost there. But take it one step further and create the visuals using real data acquired by NASA spacecraft and the experience becomes even more. Using from NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft, Home Run Pictures' animators visualized a simulated strike of a coronal mass ejection or CME showing the Earth's electromagnetic field flexing, breaking and reconnecting as it protects life on our planet.

Our Solar System's Sun also has a very strong magnetic field and the intertwining of the Sun's field with the planets, including our Earth, creates a massive electromagnetic system with the solar wind pushing at planetary fields and creating space weather. On the Sun, the magnetic field controls the various prominences and other solar atmospheric disturbances such as erruptions called coronal mass ejections or CME's.

When a CME strikes the Earth, our electromagnetic field responds protecting our planet's surface from the energy and radiation contained in the plasma. Home Run Pictures' animators took real data points acquired by NASA and created visualiztions showing the field responding and acting as a shield.

The Earth's molten iron core's rotation creates this electromagnetic field. Other planets also have magnetic fields. Some like the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn have very massive fields that dwarf our Earth's.

During the reconnection process, some energy travels down the polar field lines and as it strikes the polar regions, creates beautiful aurora formations. These formations can be seen from the surface in the higher latitudes and because of its orbit, astronauts in the International Space Station at times pass over the beautiful displays.

The Space Institute at Rice University through a NASA grant provided the real data used, translating the massive amount of data into a form that Home Run Pictures' animators could import into visual effects software. Since the acquired points represented snapshots, the data then had to be interpolated into motion usable by the visual effects rendering applications, a time comsuming process to generate the seconds of animated visuals the 4K x 4K imagery needed by the video systems projecting on to the planetarium dome to create an exciting immersive experience for the audience.

Soundtrack courtesy of Doug Maxwell / Media Right Productions