- London Planetarium
The building that once housed the London Planetarium is in
Marylebone Road , London. It is adjacent toMadame Tussauds and is owned by the same company.Opened in 1958 on the site of an old cinema that was destroyed in the
Second World War , the planetarium seated an audience of around 330 beneath a horizontal dome approximately 18 m in diameter. For its first five decades of operation, an opto-mechanical star projector offered the audience a show based on a view of the night sky as seen from earth. Between 1977 and 1990, eveninglaser performances called 'Laserium' were held. In 1995, one of the world's first digital planetarium systems,Digistar 2 (created byEvans & Sutherland ) was installed in a £4.5 million redevelopment, allowing monochromatic 3D journeys through space and many other kinds of show to be presented. The planetarium was used to teach students from University College London's astronomy department the complexity of the Celestial coordinate system, allowing for practical lectures delivered by a unison of planetarium and UCL staff.In 2004, the Planetarium was upgraded to a full-colour
Digistar 3 system that allows bothpre-rendered and real-time shows to transport the audience in animmersive fulldome video environment to distant realms of time and space.In January 2006, the London Planetarium had been renamed the Auditorium, and
Madame Tussauds announced that in July 2006 the Auditorium would open with a show byAardman Animations aboutcelebrities . To say 'farewell' to the planetarium, Madame Tussauds allowed free entry to the show in its penultimate, week (24–30 April 2006).The London Planetariam no longer exists and it is no longer possible to visit it as a discrete attraction. The web site is redirected to Madame Tussauds and here is a statement from their web site:
"In 2006 the Planetarium was rebranded and renamed the Star Dome. The Star Dome is part of the Madame Tussauds attraction and is included in the ticket price. Please note that we no longer show astronomy-based shows"
ee also
*
Peter Harrison Planetarium External links
* [http://www.london-planetarium.com/ Official website]
* [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2017210,00.html It inspired generations of children, but now the Planetarium is focusing on lesser stars] Article fromThe Times by Joanna Bale
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