Planetarium upgrade a stellar success Brigette Kerridge-Flaim, 5, with her mum Anna Flaim in the Cosmic Skydome at The Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium on March 30, 2013. Amateur astronomers queued outside the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium on Saturday morning to get the first glimpse at its refurbished interior and dome. The cosmic centre closed in early January for a $1 million renovation, with a new 12.5 metre projection dome and high-tech Megastar IIB optical star projector installed, and seating, carpets, wheelchair access and foyer displays updated. "The shows have gone very well today, the kid shows sold out - we actually had to turn some people away on the phone!" said curator Mark Rigby. People interact with exhibits at the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium on March 30, 2013 Photo: Harrison Saragossi But we've got two weeks of Easter holidays so there's plenty of time for people to catch up, and if necessary we'll run some extra shows to take some of the overflow. Mr Rigby said the rebuild went according to plan. You might think a three-month shut down is a long one, but it's actually quite short for something of this magnitude in planetariums - some take six months or more. Brisbane is the only city in Australia to have a standalone planetarium, and Mr Rigby said it was a great asset. "I've been here for 28 years and I love it," Mr Rigby said. The facility opened in the Mt Coot-tha Botanical Gardens in 1978 with a Zeiss optical star projector, which Mr Rigby said had been retained. "We didn't want to trash that, so that makes a nice display in the foyer now," he said. It looks like a dumbbell, whereas the new Megastar-IIB looks quite a bit like [Star Wars character] R2D2. The Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium will open from 11am to 4pm on Sunday March 31, close for Easter Monday, then re-open on Tuesday April 2. For show times and bookings, visit the website.