The Pacific Planetarium Association (PPA) is a non-profit organization with members mostly from planetariums in the western states of Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington.
Our mission is to facilitate communication and cooperation among members of the planetarium community to help them provide the very best services to their respective communities in science literacy, arts & humanities awareness, and understanding of our universe.
Upcoming PPA events:
2024 Planetarians' Zoom Seminars (PZSs) are usually on the last Friday of the month. They are recorded and archived on the Seminar Archive page. For connection URL, see the Seminar Connection page. See Seminar Schedule page for full descriptions.
No July PZS...IPS Conference in Berlin July 19-27.
2024 Aug 30 11am PDT (18:00 UT). Celebrating Alan Friedman's Legacy - Audience Participation and More. Alan Friedman was a pioneer in developing and nurturing techniques for audience participation in the planetarium world. This seminar will honor his legacy by looking at his career, his accomplishments, the people he mentored, and the audience participation strategies he promoted.
2024 Oct 22–26 WAC conference with GLPA in Peoria IL
2024 Sep 17. TBD
2024 Nov 22 11am PST (19:00 UT). Testing Options with Members of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community.
Announcements:
See recordings of past Planetarians' Zoom Seminar on the Seminar Archive page. Latest: Climate Roundtable, Anna Hurst, Michael McConville, Jeff Nee, Mark SubbaRao, Juan Hurtado, John Keller, Jeff Bennett
NASA Resource Page for Planetariums - updated 03/14/23
The Pointer, a PPA magazine published from 1968 t0 1970, will be appearing on this site's Publications page. The first six issues are available now.
IDEA Committee statement.
You can now make DONATIONS to PPA. See below.
Support the PPA!
You may support PPA projects, including the Mini Grant program, by contributing with credit card, debit card, or Paypal using this Donate button:
Alternatively, send a check made out to Pacific Planetarium Association to Alan Gould, PPA Treasurer, 1256 Spruce St, Berkeley CA 94709 .
To become a PPA member, see the PPA Membership page.
The Pacific Planetarium Association pay tribute to the lives and legacies of dear members who have passed on, but remain with us in memory: Don Warren (1999), Charles Hagar (2013), Lonny Baker (2015), Dale Etheridge (2019), Mike Bennett (2021), and Steve Craig (2021).
PPA is an affiliate of the International Planetarium Society. Recordings of recent IPS virtual conferences are on the IPS youtube channel.
PPA is also one of the associations in the Western Alliance Conference of Planetarium Associations (WAC—Western Alliance Conference).
PPA youtube channel: youtube.com/@ppadomes