Shining on

Friday, January 10, 1997

Engineering students give LASERAMA a permanent home in the UCLA PlanetariumBy Brooke Olson

Daily Bruin Staff

he neon signs on the new Ackerman building are not the only bright lights blazing across the UCLA campus.

Laser light shows developed and produced entirely by students are now being shown several nights a week in the UCLA Planetarium.

Similar to the Griffith Park Laserium, the LASERAMA uses digital computers to compose various color pictures that are projected onto the roof of the planetarium.

"The show is, in fact, a microcosm of the (Griffith Park) Laserium," said electrical engineering graduate student Mike Ross, director of LASERAMA.

"We have a smaller theater than the park does and most of our images are drawn beforehand rather than live like they do at the park," Ross added.

LASERAMA is run mainly by engineering students, although any students are welcome to produce a show. No class credit or salary is allotted to the LASERAMA engineers.

"LASERAMA really allows students the opportunity to take a project from the beginning and see it through to its completion," Ross said.

The show uses four different color lasers ­ red, blue, orange and yellow ­ to produce various images. Other colors can be made by combining any set of the four original colors.

Lasers are shined onto mirrors, which are attached to motors. These motors move the mirrors back and forth at a rate of 10 to 15 times a second, projecting what appears to be an image onto the top of the dome.

Some of the images are drawn before hand and entered into the computer during the show.

However, the other images are drawn during the show, as the LASERAMA engineer uses joysticks to determine the positions of the mirrors.

"It is really quite an amazing technology and it really allows each student a creative edge when determining what images will be shown," Ross said.

The images are presented in accordance with a variety of music tunes ­ everything from REM to Beauty and the Beast to the UCLA Marching Band.

LASERAMA was developed by members of the honors engineering society California Epsilon chapter of Tau Beta Pi as an attraction for UCLA's Mardi Gras carnival fund-raiser in 1980.

At that time, it was a very simplistic show, with an analogue computer and one color laser beam projected onto the roof of a specially constructed wood building.

The show was so popular that it continued to be shown every year during Mardi Gras.

By the early '80s, analogue computers were replaced with digital computers, allowing for more extensive images to be produced. The wood structure was replaced by a large cloth tent, sharpening the image and producing a more popular show.

Although the show continued to make money even during the years when Mardi Gras faltered, the festivals directors decided in 1994 to cancel LASERAMA.

But engineering students resolved to keep the light shining.

From the mid-1980s to the present, miniscule Laserama shows were presented on Welcome Day for all engineering students.

In 1994, when the students were planning their soon-to-be cancelled Mardi Gras event, arrangements were made with the astronomy department to have the shows in the planetarium on top of the Mathematical Sciences building.

Despite being thrown out of Mardi Gras, the show continued to dominate Welcome Day events and in 1995 several students, including Ross, decided to make LASERAMA a permanent part of the UCLA scene.

"Our show worked really well in the planetarium on 'Welcome Day' and we decided that maybe we could show LASERAMA year-around at UCLA," Ross said.

It was soon discovered that the Mathematical Sciences Planetarium had not been used for the last five years. Since the astronomy department did not have any future plans for the planetarium, the engineering students made a proposal.

In exchange for use of the planetarium, the Electrical Engineering Society would repair the damaged star projector located inside the planetarium.

The astronomy department agreed, and in May of 1996 LASERAMA found a permanent dwelling spot.

"It's a fun show and it's right here on campus and easy to get to," said Jeremy Bayers, a second-year undeclared student. "It's also much cheaper than the Griffith Park Laserium."