The Visitors Centre was the place to be on Tuesday as the city unveiled a new exhibit.
Yellowknife Skies of Wonder opened to the public, which will give visitors a chance to observe the aurora in a 3D theatre setting. The show included a series of aurora photos and footage captured around the city.
The theatre provides visitors with the opportunity to observe the aurora at any time of the day throughout the year, as well as getting to look at other parts of the NWT in the future.
“The main purpose is to have tourists come in, whether it’s during the day or if they came in July, in the hope that they would return in the winter to see it for themselves,” said Mayor Rebecca Alty.
The grand opening also introduced new interactive information kiosks, an AuroraMax 2.0 system that will give people updates on when the aurora will be out and the Wall of Wow, which showcases photos of the aurora around the Yellowknife area.
Sarah Sibley, the city’s manager of economic development and communications, said the biggest part of the job was to renovate a part of the centre for the theatre and to find the right footage and photos to show the visitors.
Kris Johnson, North Slave regional superintendent for the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, said that the project was funded through the department’s Community Tourism Infrastructure Program, which is a 50-50 share program. The city contributed $54,000 toward the project and was matched by ITI.
Johnson mentioned that the aurora, as one of the big tourism attratctions in the territory, can be a perfect promotion tool for the city to attract more tourists to the NWT.
James Pugsley, president of Astronomy North, said that the update of the new kiosks was a replacement for the old one, which had been around for more than a decade, with newer content and a more compact dimension.
As well, Puglsey said the organization also upgraded the Northern Lighthouse, which can be seen at various locations around the city.
The new version will change the indication light automatically with the information read from the solar wind index. The old version had to rely on an actual ‘lighthouse watcher’ to trigger it manually.