The planetarium, located in the Cooper Physical Science Building, has benefited 60,000 Ball State students, 200,000 elementary and middle school students and more than 100,000 residents from the community since its installation in 1967.
In four decades, though, some of the facility's equipment has become outdated, according to planetarium Director Ronald Kaitchuck.
Renovations needed on the planetarium include an increase in the dome's capacity, the replacement of seating and technology updates, Kaitchuck said.
He said a $100,000 projector will be installed, and digital components will be added.
"The quality in projecting the sky will be better, far more accurate," he said. "The digital component will now fill the entire sky (dome) with video. We're not limited to be in the Earth anymore."
Ball State Bold, introduced in September 2008, is a fundraising campaign that has the goal of collecting $200 million. Director of Development Mark Robbins said the campaign is raising $2.5 million to renovate the planetarium. He said they are looking for donors who are interested particularly in astronomy and physics.
"We realize that the next generation of space explorers come from people that are just enamoured with space," Robbins said. "And planetariums help to enlist a person's excitement in terms of what lies beyond this world."
The campaign runs through June 30, 2011, but the university is hoping to get the funding for the planetarium project soon, Robbins said.
"We are having discussions with the donors, incorporations and foundations who would be interested in the project," he said. "And we are certainly working as hard as we can to make this a reality as soon as possible."
Kaitchuck said the planetarium is in function not only during the academic year, but is open during the summer for workshops.
"[People] come from all over the country coming to these workshops," he said. "We have even had people come from Europe."
On Thursday Ball State, in collaboration with the Muncie community, celebrated the international astronomy year at Minnetrista. Images from the galaxy M101 were displayed and a guest speaker gave a presentation on telescopes.
NASA released images taken from the biggest observatories in the U.S., the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to 118 planetariums, museums and schools across the country to commemorate the 400-year anniversary of Galileo's use of the telescope. Ball State's planetarium was one of the five astronomic centers in Indiana selected to display the images.
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