Educational Film Production Services by
Theofanis Matsopoulos
ESO Expedition 2016 (Chile)
In March 2016 the Fulldome Expedition set off for ESO’s observatories in Chile where the very clear and dark night sky offers a perfect view of the heavens. The expedition team included the renowned photographers Yuri Beletsky, Petr Horalek and Babak Tafreshi. It was also strengthened by Theofanis Matsopoulos, a pioneer of planetarium cinematography.
NSF NOIRLab Expedition 2022 (USA - Chile)
The NSF NOIRLab 2022 Photo Expedition team, Petr Horálek, Tomáš Slovinský and Theofanis Matsopoulos, first gathered at Tucson, at the headquarters of NoirLab, then they moved to Kitt Peak National Observatory.
After a short break they flew for the Hawaii’s Big Island at the Mauna Kea Observatories in order to take pictures and videos of Gemini Observatory. Then the team turned southwards and travelled to the last stop on their journey: Chile! Their first stop in Chile was Cerro Pachón (Gemini South - SOAR - Vera C. Rubin Observatory ) and then they moved to Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.
NoirLab’s expedition team has successfully captured a very wide variety of beautiful visual material including hundreds of high resolution videos for planetarium use, Time lapses, cinematic videos, panoramic pictures and thousands of images of the facilities and the night sky.
You can find the results from NoirLab’s website! https://noirlab.edu/public/images/ - https://noirlab.edu/public/videos/
LIGO Hanford Expedition 2023 (USA)
On July 2023 Theofanis Matsopoulos visited LIGO Hanford to collect visual material such as stereoscopic 3D high resolution videos for Planetariums, 8K videos for digital TV and digital cinemas, 360 Panoramas and various photographs of the observatory’s infrastructure.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory designed to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool. The material will be available through NSF NOIRLab's webpage.
Hawaii 2024 (NoirLab)
On February 2024 I had the privilege of exploring the Hawii's Big Island not only as part of my photo expedition on Mauna Kea but also to film for a cultural documentary created for a special event accompanying my lecture about NOIRLab's photo expedition.
Cyprus 2025 ESA CARES
On February 2025 Theofanis Matsopoulos visited Cyprus to collect visual material (FullDome videos, 360 panoramas, UHD videos) for the new ESA CARES documentary about Cyprus.
Chile 2025 (NoirLab)
As part of an official NOIRLab photo and video expedition, I had the privilege of visiting Cerro Pachón in my role as audiovisual ambassador for NOIRLab. The goal was to capture both daytime and nighttime visuals of the observatories for planetarium and giant screen formats, where visual precision and scale are essential. The experience was both technically demanding and deeply inspiring, an opportunity to witness the future of astronomy taking shape before my eyes.
