A comprehensive directory of the world's planetaria and digital dome theaters!

Since 1977, Loch Ness Productions has amassed what is probably the world's foremost accumulation of data about the planetarium and digital dome theater community. We currently maintain information on nearly 1,500 theaters in the United States and another 1,800 or so in other countries.

All this information, and much more, is available to you — in the LNP DOME THEATER COMPENDIUM. Check out the ONLINE PREVIEWS! to see how it works.

We currently make the data available in two different "packages":

The LNP DOME THEATER COMPENDIUM BROWSER is a collection of HTML (ASCII text) files, a Cascading Style Sheet, and several small .GIF graphics for viewing in any modern frames-capable, CSS-compliant Web browser. There are no programs to install; you simply point your Web browser to the cover page, and it takes over from there.

The files require about 3MB of disk space; we've gathered them into a small (~600KB) zip archive for easy transmission as an e-mail attachment. Alternatively, for a modest additional cost, we record the files in uncompressed form onto a CD-R. They can be viewed directly from the disc, or copied to a folder on your computer and viewed from there.

The LNP FULLDOME THEATER COMPENDIUM SUBSCRIPTION focuses on the subset of theaters (currently about 500 worldwide) that have fulldome video technology installed. It's a downloadable zip file; we provide you with a private URL valid for a calendar year's worth of accesses from our Web site. The zip file contains:

  • a space-filled, fixed-length-record database file in DBF form, which can be imported into most modern database and spreadsheet programs, such as Microsoft Excel. Read more...

  • a collection of HTML (ASCII text) files, a Cascading Style Sheet, and several small .GIF graphics for viewing in any modern frames-capable, CSS-compliant Web browser. This is basically the same data we have posted online here, and adds several features of the big LNP DOME THEATER COMPENDIUM, such as the popular statistics summaries, and indices with people names and projector models.

When we run the program that updates our online Web listings, we generate a new version of the data files above, and the zip file gets uploaded along with the public online updates. This happens, on average, every 3-4 weeks or so. You can download the current data zip file whenever you want. At the start of the new year, we'll change the name/URL of the zip file, and send an e-mail asking if you want to renew the subscription. If so, you'll get the new URL and be good to go for another year.

The files require about 1MB of disk space; we've gathered them into a small (~300KB) zip archive for easy downloading.