Conferences
Next Conference:
Previous Conference:
2022 August 22–27 PPA & WAC joined the SEPA Conference at U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, home of Space Camp®, David Weigel, Planetarium Director.
This conference was live and in person, with dome time in the Rocket Center’s INTUITIVE® Planetarium. Conference meetings took place at the Huntsville Marriott, on the Rocket Center’s campus. The INTUITIVE Planetarium (67' in diameter with 248 seats), perhaps the newest dome in SEPA, opened in February 2019 after converting its former IMAX™ Theater. It has 5 Christie 4k RGB laser projectors running on Digistar 7, enabling the immersive visualizations created in house.
Attendees experienced “Music of the Spheres,” a collaboration with internationally recognized violinist Itamar Zorman performing works of Johann Sebastian Bach, Eugene Ysaye, Philip Glass, Missy Mazzoli, and Claude Debussy set to visualizations created by the INTUITIVE Planetarium team.
The closing banquet was an exquisite dining experience under the National Historic Landmark Saturn V moon rocket in the Davidson Center for Space Exploration. Following the farewell breakfast on Saturday, Aug. 27, attendees could take part in a one-day Space Camp experience that includes a simulated space mission, engineering challenges, astronaut simulators, and team building on our Leadership Reaction course. Additional registration fees apply.
Learn more at
Past Conferences
2021 E -WAC August 3rd and 4th
2020 WAC: Casper Planetarium Casper, Wyoming
List of Past WACs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hosting a Conference
*More about the 2023 Planetarium Conference
The 2023 joint planetarium conference includes all of the US planetarium regional organizations: a U.S. conference! (GLPA, GPPA, MAPS, PPA, RMPA, SEPA & SWAP).
The conference will be in Kingsport, Tennessee and the host site is Bays Mountain Park & Planetarium, a 3,650 acre nature preserve with animal habitats, miles of trails, a large lake and planetarium with 40' (12.2m) dome, a Carl Zeiss ZKP-4 with LED stars and a six-channel VELVET LED digital projector system.
There will be the Mini-LIPS all-day workshop on the June 20 and the Astronomy Teaching Boot Camp all-day workshop on Monday, the June 19.
The conference site and hotel is the MeadowView Marriott, only three miles down a neighborly road from the Park. It is a four-star hotel with very large meeting spaces and excellent hotel rooms and food. We've established a special room rate of $126.00 plus tax per day for a two-week window surrounding the conference.
Key dates:
July 2022 - The online hotel room reservation link will open.
November-December 2022 - Inquiries of vendors for sponsor levels, vendor hall and planetarium theater demo needs and final call for vendor workshops.
November-December 2022 - Inquiries of delegates wanting to provide workshops.
Late February 2023 - Online registration opens.
June 5, 2023 - Cut off date for registration and special hotel rate.