London Planetarium

The London Planetarium is located on the Marylebone road. It was one of the most famous tourist's attractions of London. It is located right next to Madame Tussaud’s. It is owned by the same company as Madame Tussaud's. The planetarium was a major tourist attraction when it was active till the year of 2006 after which it was rebranded and renamed.

The planetarium opened in the year of 1958. The planetarium was constructed over a cinema that was destroyed during the Second World War. It was one of its kind when it was constructed. It took the 330 people who were seated inside into a journey that was basically out of this world. When the planetarium opened mechanical projectors were used to show the audience pictures of space from earth. It most typically contained the pictures of the night sky and the pictures of moon and the stars. The planetarium soon began to develop and from the year 1977 the planetarium began to show laser shows of outer space. It received many positive responses from the people who were going to see the shows and it became immensely popular with the school children.

The planetarium is said to have inspired many children to become scientists and astronauts and many of the most eminent scientists of today admit that their inspiration was the planetarium. There had been significant improvements over the planetarium and its techniques and the shows kept on improving. Also the number of people who visited the planetarium significantly increased. The planetarium underwent a redevelopment of over 2.5 million pounds in the year 1995. This was the year when the planetarium was fitted with the first every digital planetarium system known as the Digistar2. This development allowed the audience to be taken into 3D journeys into space. Apart from the commercial aspect the planetarium was used vastly for educational purposes as well.

The London planetarium is one of the famous land marks of London. Even though it is not a tourist attraction it remains to this date remembered in London. The planetarium was used to teach school children about the planets and the stars where they could have real time learning experience. Also the planetarium was used to teach students from different collages about the complexities of the star systems. However in the year of 2006 it was announced by the company that owned the planetarium then that the planetarium would be closed down. This causes a considerable outrage within the student as well as the education community of London however this was of no effect. The planetarium was shut down and development plans are being made right now about its future.

The name is now changed to Star dome and it has been decided that there would no longer be any astronomy based shows in the planetarium. Instead the planetarium would be showing shows that are based on celebrities. This is because according to a spokesperson of the company that kids today are not interested in astronomy based shows anymore.