Saunders Planetarium & IMAX Digital Dome Theatre

50sSNIPES on October 18, 2026 at 5:30 am

The IMAX theater was part of MOSI’s $36 million 136,700-square-foot expansion that was first introduced in January 1993 and approved by Hillsborough County on April 5, 1995 to expand from its original 1982 size of 65,000-square-foot to 201,700-square-foot. The expansion pre-dates back to its original idea in 1990 when the Legislature gave the project its blessing with a $15 million grant from the Department of Education’s Public Education Capital Outlay fund. The Hillsborough County Commission voted to match the grant that came with the condition that a local government can match the money in January 1991. Out of the $36 million in construction work, $15 million was used from the Department of Education’s construction fund which is a matching amount in bonds floated by Hillsborough County and the city of Tampa, and $6 million was used in private donations and state grants.

Arizona resident and nationally renowned architect Antoine Predock, who modeled the building clay and transformed his vision into a computerized blueprint, teamed up with Tampa-based “Robbins, Bell, and Kreher Inc.” for the entirety of construction for the IMAX theater originally named the MOSIMAX. The MOSIMAX officially launched on July 2, 1995 with “To The Limit”, exactly one day after the expansion’s opening. The screen is in the shape of an 82-foot hemisphere arching over the 350 seats in total, including 70mm IMAX projection that uses images 10 times greater than conventional film frames resulting in perfect clarity, a six-channel high-fidelity sound system through a grand total of 44 speakers, a “Rolling Loop” projection room, and the circular overhead itself with a wraparound 10,500-square-foot curved screen. Unfortunately, its original MOSIMAX name didn’t last long, and on June 5, 1998, it was renamed “IMAX Dome Theatre at the MOSI”.

50sSNIPES on July 14, 2026 at 12:09 pm

It reopened on April 1, 2025, not August.