Stargazing and big cities do not go together. While stars of a human persuasion tread the boards and streets of the West End, their celestial counterparts are obscured by light pollution.
The London Planetarium seemed to agree. This adjunct to Madame Tussauds closed its doors last year and was replaced with a tribute to earthly fame.
The hiatus in stellar educational spaces was only temporary. Today, a new planetarium is being unveiled by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. The centre is part of a five-year redevelopment of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, costing £16 million.
The Peter Harrison Planetarium, named after the charitable foundation that provided most funding, sits on the Greenwich Meridian. Working astronomers will present up-to-date imagery of the cosmos to audiences of up to 120. It opens to non-Royals on 25 May.
Image taken from .Martin.’s Flickr photostream.
I was living in New York when the Hayden planetarium at the Natural History Museum was opened. The research group associated with the museum hosted a four day conference there on dwarf objects, and the planetarium facility was used to display computational simulations, it was a fantastic tool. The planetarium integrated a Beowulf cluster to drive an image projector along with a top class Zeiss projector.
It sounds like the new planetarium in London might have similar capabilities, I’d love to know if anyone has any plans to use the facility for conferences.